Google, finally shows its funny side

Jackson West | Sunday, April 1, 2007 | 7:32 AM PT | 20 comments

The world will get a chuckle out of Google’s April Fools prank, “TiSP.” But unless you’ve been following their plans with Earthlink to develop a citywide wifi program pretty closely, you might have missed the element of mockery.

You see, a competing plan proposed by San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano proposed building out a municipally owned network by laying fiber-optic cable alongside the city’s underground sewers.

Local columnist Matt Smith called Ammiano’s plan a “boondoggle” in this weeks San Francisco Weekly, though also complained that Gavin Newsom’s lack of political skill is what’s keeping Google from giving away “what amounts to free beer.”

Touche, Google. Touche.

4 trackbacks so far

April 1st, 2007
8:20 PM PT

Google’s ‘Toilet ISP’ Not So Far Fetched…

Elements of Google’s April Fool’s Day “Toilet ISP” gag were once a central feature in a start-up that raised $375 million….

April 2nd, 2007
8:54 AM PT

[...] Fool’s day passed with some attempted jokes from the tech industry (oh you, Google), while Nokia and Siemens decided that was a good day to officially open its new network joint [...]

June 22nd, 2007
5:12 AM PT

[...] News, Search Engine Land, michael parekh on IT, I4U News, Clickety Clack, Google Operating System, GigaOM, broadbandreports.com, gSpy, NevilleHobson.com, Can Erten, Google Blogoscoped, Startup Meme, Alice [...]

November 25th, 2007
3:14 PM PT

[...] and GigaOm have great things to say about the [...]

16 comments so far

April 1st, 2007
8:35 AM PT
Steve Morsa said:

…takes “bathroom humor” and “potty jokes” to a whole new level…happy April Fools day, GigaOm team!

April 1st, 2007
8:52 AM PT
Om Malik said:

Thanks Steve. Since everyone is doing the April Fool’s Joke thing today, I think we are going to sit back and enjoy the whole thing by reading other people’s funnies.

April 1st, 2007
11:51 AM PT
Phil Rack said:

Sounds kind of crappy to me. I wonder if it will require a new kind of packet sniffer? Ha! Ha!

April Fools everyone!

April 1st, 2007
11:59 AM PT
Kunal Patel said:

Google also has another prank going.

(link)

April 1st, 2007
1:35 PM PT
Coward Blogger said:

As far as I remember, Google has been pulling pranks for the last 3 years keep it’s corporate humor kicking and alive on April Fool’s day.

Surprisingly, Microsoft hasn’t yet copied this April Fool concept :-)

April 1st, 2007
2:34 PM PT

Along those lines, the Sloof Lirpa Center has announced a vulnerability in Google’s AdSense code:

(link)

April 1st, 2007
3:42 PM PT
Phil Butler said:

It is apparent that funny rules the Web for sure! I tend to be the more serious type, but you have to be able to laugh.

Next we will have Google scratch and sniff ads called Adsnifs.

April 1st, 2007
4:09 PM PT
P. G. said:

Keeping the April 1st’s tradition alive, here is an interesting post from Scobleizer’s blog:

(link)

Just wanted to share…

April 1st, 2007
7:16 PM PT
Martin said:

want to share this site:
(link)
A virtual community, and it seems as a fools day present.

April 1st, 2007
11:39 PM PT
Andrew said:

Just not funny.

April 2nd, 2007
6:58 AM PT
anonymous said:

Pathetic!

just shows there are too many geeks in the company with less work.
- thinking about toilets
- bringing dogs to work
- eat free food
- roller hockey
- sleep at work

Google shows its ugly corporate side where people will email this link around and everyone who visits will generate a hit to Google site, maybe a % of them will search on Google and a fraction of this % will generate $$$ via Ads.

April 2nd, 2007
8:01 PM PT
kym said:

yeah pretty boring…
Gmail Paper was much funnier

April 2nd, 2007
10:04 PM PT
plantronics said:

I think they have too much free time on their hands..

April 3rd, 2007
1:34 PM PT
ryan said:

Most idiotic spoof !!
certainly not expected on google standards, if they plan to set one !!

April 3rd, 2007
1:51 PM PT
Karl said:

At first I thought this might explain Google’s recent purchases of the ‘dark fiber’. Afterall, they would need the fiber to support the bandwidth for the free wireless internet connection they are offering. Unfortunately this is just an april fool joke but Google becoming ISP is not that far off.

Karl,
free price quotes

December 26th, 2007
11:51 PM PT
john said:

At first i thought it was real but i remembered it was april fools day. If any company can pull this off it is google w/ this high speed internet lol. (link)

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