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When April Fool's Day pranks from Tesla, Google backfired badly as users left frustrated; ‘We regret that…’
April Fool's Day: Take a look at top firms' pranks that failed to impress users and investors.
April Fool's Day is all about jokes and pranks to lighten your and your loves ones' mood. Not just friends and family, even some big firms have attempted to prank their employees on this day, which is celebrated on 1st day of April. However, a few companies have found that their harmless antics damaged their brands rather than entertaining consumers.
That's because for every successful hoax promoting a phony product like “Game of Thrones” star Thor Bjornsson's HeavyBubbles commercial, there is an overly enthusiastic corporation whose poorly planned antics backfired, sometimes catastrophically.
When Elon Musk joked about Tesla becoming completely bankrupt
For Elon Musk's Tesla, March 2018 was a bad month. The electric car company's shares fell to their lowest levels ever, which led to barrage of negative headlines about factory production problems, an auto recall, a humiliating drop of its credit status, expensive legal setbacks, and an open dispute with a federal safety agency looking into a fatal crash that killed a Model X driver in California.
Most business owners who are burdened due to such negative publicity might avoid any possible controversy. In contrast, Musk declared on April 1, 2018, that Tesla got “completely and totally bankrupt.”
Despite the efforts of raising money by selling Easter Eggs, Musk claimed in a tweet that Tesla has filed for every possible chapter of bankruptcy, “including Chapter 14 and a half (the worst one).”
“We are sad to report that Tesla has gone completely and totally bankrupt. So bankrupt, you can't believe it,” he added.
However, investors weren't amused by Musk's prank on April Fool's Day. According to The Washington Post, Tesla shares faced additional 5% drop and business analysts even questioned Musk's capacity to steer the multibillion-dollar corporation.
Also Read: Happy April Fool's Day 2025: Top messages, quotes to share with your loved ones
When Google said sorry after 'Mic Drop' prank faced criticism
In 2016, Google apologized to unhappy users after an April Fool's Day hoax backfired, causing more hassles for the firm than laughs.
As part of a practical joke, the search engine company revealed that its latestfeature in Gmail, the Mic Drop, would make “it easier to have the last word on any email”. It said that a person requires to include a GIF of a yellow animated minion character (from the animated “Despicable Me” and “Minion” movies) dropping a microphone.
But due to a coding glitch created through Google's coders, the Mic Drop accidentally showed up on emails and had to be manually disabled. “We love April Fools jokes at Google, and we regret that this joke missed the mark and disappointed you,” the firm stated.
