An unlikely royal intervention into Britain’s European referendum debate was among the April Fools’ stories foxing the world’s newspaper readers Friday — but for US Internet giant Google, the joke was
An unlikely royal intervention into Britain’s European referendum debate was among the April Fools’ stories foxing the world’s newspaper readers Friday — but for US Internet giant Google, the joke was on them.
Britain’s papers, traditional bastions of the light-hearted annual prank, concentrated on the country’s June 23 referendum on membership of the European Union to trick unsuspecting victims.
The Guardian claimed to have exclusive information that Greek-born Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, was to defy Britain’s strict constitutional rules and come out in favour of the European Union, given his “impeccable European credentials” and “strong affinity with the continent.”
According to the paper’s “well-connected source”, the royal family had turned against London mayor and high-profile anti-EU campaigner Boris Johnson as he had “made it difficult to get around London in a decent-sized Daimler”. However, there were apparently concerns that Philip could not be trusted with a live broadcast given his “propensity for swearing.”
A recent Sun newspaper story claiming that the queen was in favour of Britain leaving the EU prompted Buckingham Palace to complain to Britain’s press watchdog. Google was forced to hastily pull its lighthearted April Fools’ prank after it landed users in trouble.
The United States’ technology firm added an extra send button to its Gmail service that adds a gif of a minion, one of the yellow creatures from the Despicable Me series, to its emails. But many users hit the button without realising, sending important business emails and even funeral arrangements with the jokey cartoon.
“Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year,” the company admitted.”
“The MicDrop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off.”
Meanwhile, in the United States, the age-old tradition of hoaxing on the first day of April was alive and well in bogus ad campaigns hawking everything from dog brassieres to employment agencies for babies.
“It gets more and more challenging to stand out,” said Rachael King, spokeswoman for Third Love, a lingerie maker that partnered with DogVacay, a pet sitting service, to unveil the fake line of dog brassieres.
Another prank promoted “Jobs for Babies,” a bogus new service to help babies find their dream jobs.
