Google cancels its April Fools’ joke this year

Google's highest goal right now is to be helpful to people

With coronavirus pandemic getting serious, April Fools’ Day, one of the most rejoiced days by Google is being put on a hold this year.

The search engine giant is famous for its elaborate pranks, however, due to the spread of coronavirus and its impact on the world; the company has decided to not participate.

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Google will “take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let’s save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one,” reports Business Insider.

“We’ve already stopped any centralized April fool’s efforts but realise there may be smaller projects within teams that we don’t know about,” Lorraine Twohill, Google’s head of marketing said in an email to Business Insider.

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“Please suss out those efforts and make sure your teams pause on any jokes they may have planned — internally or externally.”

The company has been taking a proactive role in combating the virus. It recently introduced an alert feature on Google Maps which pops up when users search for “doctor” and notifies the user that they should call the hospital in advance if they feel their symptoms match that of COVID-19, which is fever, flu, nausea and body ache.

The company also donated $800 million funds towards producing medical supplies used to fight COVID-19, and in ad credits to government and health organisations and businesses, said Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer.

This article originally published on The Verge.