Google's Mic Drop Gag Screws Up April Fools' Day Joke

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Google is one of the best purveyors of April Fools' Day jokes, but things went off the rails this year. A supposed new Gmail feature called Mic Drop actually worked, and resulted in some less-than-professional emails reaching the wrong people.

The intent behind Mic Drop was to offer people the last word in annoying email.

"Email's great," explained Google, "but sometimes you just wanna hit the eject button. Like those heated threads at work, when everyone's wrong except you (obviously). Or those times when someone's seeking group approval, but your opinion is the only one that matters (amirite?). Or maybe you just nailed it, and there's nothing more to say (bam)."

With Mic Drop, users hit a button and sent a GIF of a Minion dropping a mic and walking away. The feature purported to block all future messages in the thread. Well, turns out it worked too well.

Users were quick to complain.

"I hit this thing by accident in a professional email sending a contract," wrote one user. "This is ridiculous and not funny at all. Remove it please!!!"

"Thanks to Mic Drop I just lost my job," wrote another. "I am a writer and had a deadline to meet. I send my articles to my boss and never heard back from her."

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"This sounds like such a joke," complained yet another, "but unfortunately it is not. I sent out an important email to 30 recipients and inadvertently clicked the Mic Drop Send."

Google was forced to backtrack on the joke: "Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We're truly sorry. The feature has been turned off."

Mic Drop isn't the only Google joke on deck for the day.

A supposed new feature of Google's Inbox app will replace Smart Reply options with emoji.

"Whatever you want to say, emoji can say it better (obvs)," according to Google. "So we figured we'd take the deep neural network behind Smart Reply, and make it more sassy. The result is emoji suggestions in addition to (or instead of) really boring text replies. In our testing, we've also found that emoji do a better job of plumbing the emotional depths of one's soul, so we're optimistic that today's update will encourage more open and honest email conversations."

Google also has a new tool to help developers prepare their Android apps for outer space. Yes indeed, Google is preparing for the new era of space exploration, and it wants to be sure developers can prepare their apps for distribution to those who are off-planet:

With advances in space exploration and the advent of galactic tourism, there will be a high number of users beyond this world that developers need to start thinking about, too. Google Play can now help you reach them. We've added new features to the Google Play Developer Console and updated the material design guidelines, to help you design, test, and distribute your apps and games in space.

Har-dee-har.

Be careful out there today, folks.