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Google apologizes again for its ill-fated 'Mic Drop' prank
Every year Google insists on unleashing a storm of April Fool's "jokes," but this time one had a problem. Last night its Gmail "Mic Drop" feature that responded with a dismissive GIF and closed the conversation permanently had to be pulled after user complaints. Now in a second update to its blog post, Google has acknowledged its mistake, focusing on three points: It should've asked users before turning on the feature and/or added a confirmation step, it placed the Mic Drop button too close to other more familiar elements, and there was a bug that could cause the regular send button to still send Mic Drops. Hopefully any damage wasn't too catastrophic, and Google says it's working on bringing Mic Dropped messages with further replies back to user's inboxes.
Google kills Gmail joke on April Fools' after user backlash
Like all jokes on April Fools' Day, some are received better than others. Pranksters usually mean well, but there's always someone that pushes the envelope a little too far, upsetting the recipient. Google fell into this trap today after launching a new "feature" for Gmail users called Mic Drop. It added a secondary "Send" button to the web interface, which would exchange a humorous GIF with all of the thread's participants. More importantly, it also muted the chain so that the user couldn't see any follow-up emails in their inbox. Just like a classic mic drop, really.
