It’s an April Fool’s Day Spoof, but It’s Not a Joke

Monday was a really funny and sad day on the Internet.

Funny because the tech companies in Silicon Valley indulged in their annual April Fool’s jokes, announcing prank products that don’t actually exist. Sad because many of those goofy updates could easily have been real. Vimeo’s spoof unveiling of a new service dedicated to cat videos, Vimeow, was one of many April Fool’s joke announcements on Monday, but for all that, it was plausible.

The jokes also point up how Silicon Valley companies frequently announce with great fanfare incremental changes that deserve little attention at all.

Take Google’s Gmail Blue spoof. A new product by Google that turns everything Gmail blue. In a video, a man asks: “How do we completely redesign something while keeping it exactly the same” Then he responds: “The answer is Gmail Blue.” The people in the video explain that everything in Gmail is now blue. ”The button compose: blue. The word compose itself: blue. Boldface is blue. Underline is blue. Italics are blue as well.”

I LOLed â€" as they say â€" when I watched the Gmail video. Then, I almost cried.

I could easily imagine Google putting out a release to note that it now offers a blue version of its products. I could conceive of any company in Silicon Valley putting out similar updates, announcing things that really shouldn’t be announced. It happens all the time.

Earlier this year Sony held an elaborate press event to show off its Sony PlayStation 4, except that the company never actually showed off the Sony PlayStation 4. Last month Twitter announced its seventh birthday. Yahoo put out a press release noting that its chief executive was going to a conference. BlackBerry put out a 450-word press release about a single third-party app becoming available for the BlackBerry phone.

Maybe the public cares if a chief executive is going to a conference. Maybe people really do care when a company changes a color on its Web site. Or maybe these companies just aren’t innovating as they once were, and so they make big deals out of little deals.

There was one truth to the Gmail Blue spoof video, and it was when the man asked: “How do we completely redesign something while keeping it exactly the same”