Google messed up big time on April Fools’ Day and may have even cost some people their jobs.
For their April Fools stunt this year they added a button to the bottom of Gmail that said “Send and Mic Drop.” If you pressed it, it automatically added a GIF of one of the Minions dropping a mic into your email. It would also permanently end the email chain.
Mistake.
First of all messing with people’s email without their permission with no way to undo it should have sent up a red flag. Plus they put it right next to the real “Send” button so people were hitting it by accident. Then there was a bug that inserted it into some people’s emails without them hitting that button.
So the horror stories started pouring in immediately…
One guy said he sent it to a company he’d been interviewing with and it cost him the job. Another person said it flat-out got them fired.
One woman accidentally sent it to 50 people with a serious prayer request for a sick relative.
Google shut it down quickly and apologized.
Gmail's 'mic drop' pulled as minion GIFs infiltrate work emails https://t.co/LjTojvS1i8 pic.twitter.com/LPguRKGQww
— Android Central (@androidcentral) April 1, 2016