Google is rushing to cancel its plans for April Fools' Day this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In an email obtained by Business Insider, the company asked workers to ensure that any plans they have for the traditionally prank-filled holiday are put on hold lest they be considered in poor taste.
Google's April Fools' Day pranks have historically been extremely elaborate affairs that have become the stuff of tech legends — including a spurious plan for a human settlement on Mars, a mic-drop button on Gmail, a treasure-hunt option on Google Maps, and "Google Translate for Animals."
But over the past few months, COVID-19 has sickened more than half a million people around the globe and killed more than 23,000, bringing economies to a screeching halt and sparking unprecedented numbers of layoffs. As such, Google has now made the decision not to run any centralized April Fools' Day jokes — and is urging managers to make sure no smaller gags slip through the net.
"Under normal circumstances April Fool's is a Google tradition and a time to celebrate what makes us an unconventional company," Google marketing boss Lorraine Twohill wrote in an email to the company's managers.
She added: "This year, we're going to take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let's save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one.
"We've already stopped any centralized April Fool's efforts but realize there may be smaller projects within teams that we don't know about. Please suss out those efforts and make sure your teams pause on any jokes they may have planned — internally or externally."
Ambitious April Fools' Day pranks, guided in part by Google's lead, have become widespread across the tech industry over the past decade. It's not yet clear if other companies still plan to go ahead with their jokes or follow Google's lead and put the tradition on ice for a year.
Like almost every other business, Google is feeling the effects of the coronavirus. Its workforce is largely working remotely, Earlier this week, , and it has faced allegations internally that it is .
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also encouraged employees to volunteer in their local communities during the pandemic and boosted the company's employee-donation matching to $10,000 per employee per year.
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