google mic drop
April Fools’ Day has morphed from a fun day for playing pranks to an all-out blitz of advertising disguised as (bad) jokes, and now #brands seem to have officially stepped over the line.

Google has pulled one of its (many) pranks after it reportedly cost people jobs, or at least screwed up people’s email workflows.

The Gmail team replaced the “Send + Archive” button in the email composition window with a “Send + Mic Drop” option for ALL users (including paying business accounts). Hitting that button was supposed to be a silly way to say you were done with the conversation by attaching the above GIF to an email, sending it out, then archiving it.

However, the button backfired on many users, who were used to just clicking the button it replaced as part of their normal workflow. The button also caused all future responses to that email to be sent straight to the archive folder.

Former Kickstarter CTO Andy Baio rounded up some of the worst ways the prank affected people.

The move to replace the “Send + Archive” button is what seems to have done the “Mic Drop” feature in, with many users habituated to hitting that button to keep their inboxes clean. And Google barely let the prank stand, pulling it just hours into the start of April Fools Day in the Pacific timezone.

“Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year,” a note attached to a Gmail blog post announcing the “feature” reads. “Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off.”

While a bug did exist, it was likely less of a factor in removing the prank than the growing number of business users that don’t want to attach Minion GIFs to their emails. With Gmail serving as a key point of entry for business users to join Google’s growing cloud offerings, the company may want to avoid turning business users off with pranks that could cost them business.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.