Gmail's 'Mic Drop' prank backfires in a mortifying way, gets pulled
Google is a pretty important company, offering pretty important services to a lot of people. So, messing with core functionality of one of their key services, Gmail, just for an April Fools' laugh is out of the question, right?
Wrong.
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On Friday, Google quickly pulled the Gmail Mic Drop feature, which added a "send and mic drop" button to Gmail, allowing users to add a GIF of a Minion dropping a microphone to their emails.
The problem with Mic Drop is that a lot of people inadvertently added the animated little guy to serious emails (see some particularly nasty examples, below).
{cardId: 18956}
{cardId: 18958}
Worse, for some users the Minion was added to the message even when they clicked on the standard "Send" button.
"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. If you are still seeing it, please reload your Gmail page," wrote Google in a blog post Friday.
Google has done literally hundreds of April Fools' pranks over the years, and the company's intentions are obviously good. But this incident is a warning that messing with billion-user services like Gmail can have dire consequences.
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Topics Google
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
