Happy April Fool's Day

Why do we celebrate April Fools' Day? Many believe this story: In 1564, King Charles IX of France passed a law that changed the beginning of the year from April 1 to January 1. News of the change traveled slowly. Those who were either misinformed or slow to make the adjustments still celebrated the New Year on April 1. As a result, they were mocked and pranks were pulled.

Google does an online hoax (or several hoaxes) each year - I am excited to see what is in store this year. Past pranks include:

• "MentalPlex" search technology that supposedly read the user's mind to determine what the user wanted to search for. http://www.google.com/mentalplex/
  

• "PigeonRank" system that uses bids to rank web pages. http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
  

• Fictitious job opportunities for a research center on the moon. http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
  

• Google Gulp, a fictitious drink that would optimize one's use of the Google search engine by increasing the drinker's intelligence. http://www.google.com/googlegulp/
  

• Google Romance - tagline: "Dating is a search problem. Solve it with Google Romance." http://www.google.com/romance/

• "Gmail Paper" - a service to add e-mails to a "Paper Archive", which Google would print and mail via traditional post. http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/index.html

• "Google Book Search Scratch and Sniff" - a new section allowing users to "scratch and sniff" certain books. Users are asked to "...please place your nose near the monitor and click 'Go'", which then "loads odors". When clicking on "Help", users are redirected to a page in a book that describes the origins of April Fools' Day. http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-book-search-now-smells-better.html