Google Apologizes For April Fool’s Day Prank

An April Fool’s prank gone wrong caused Google to officially apologize to its more than one billion users on Friday. The gag inserted animated minion GIFs into unwitting users’ emails, but Google pulled the plug on the joke shortly after complaints that the dancing yellow guys snuck their way into important emails and business correspondence.

The internet giant had to up the April Fool’s ante after a long-standing tradition of brilliant yearly gags, but this one did not seem to go over as well. The prank was intended to inject some humor into Gmail correspondence via a ‘Mic Drop’ button that inserts a Minions GIF, but the button placement caused many users to inadvertently send the GIFs.

One user claims that the seemingly harmless joke caused her to miss out on a job opportunity. This gaffe should remind us all that although we rely on Google to run our lives, it is still a private corporation, subject to the whims of higher-ups—however stupid those whims turn out to be.