We could do the same again right now, because Google has tried to top itself with another round of April Fool’s Day jokes that pretty well span the globe of Google’s international properties. Below is a recap of Google’s (and a few others) pranks, and we’ll do our best to update this as the day goes along.

Google Racing: Self-Driving Cars Hit NASCAR

The main joke at the moment is Google’s “announcement” of a partnership with NASCAR called Google Racing, which brings Google’s self-driving cars to NASCAR race tracks “by the middle of next season.”

There’s also a faux news video about Google Racing (with no embed code – the cruelest joke of all!) starring Jeff Gordon and a couple other NASCAR drivers, not to mention Sergey Brin pretending to be Google’s first NASCAR driver … or whatever you call the person who doesn’t actually drive the car.

And if you go to Google.com, the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button has been renamed “I’m Steering Lucky” and there’s a link to the Google Racing microsite.

Google Maps In 8-Bit For NES

Google’s pranks began early this morning with a blog post announcing that Google Japan has created an 8-bit version of Google Maps for the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

You can relive all your favorite 1980s graphics by clicking the “Quest” button in the upper right corner on maps.google.com.

Google Street Roo

In Australia, where Google Street View cars and trikes can’t get to remote areas of the continent, Google says it’ll use kangaroos with mini-cameras mounted on their noggins to photograph the Australian outback. They’re calling it Google Street Roo. Hopefully the 1,000-plus kangaroos won’t mistakenly collect any personal data via wifi while they’re hopping across Australia.

Google China: Underwater Search

I said it was worldwide, right? Well, even Google China has gotten in the act with an underwater search gag. It’s more like a Google doodle than a prank, though.

Google’s Really Advanced Search

Speaking of search, this one will probably go over well with our audience. Google’s really advanced search page has some pretty funny options, like this:

You can also narrow your results based on what font the page uses, what textured background the page has and which “embarrassing grammatical faux pas” is found on the page. If you’re into SEO, you’ll like this one. You may even find yourself wishing that the page actually worked.

Google Search: Weather Control

Another search gag: Google Weather Control. Type in any weather-related search (like “seattle weather”) and you can make the weather anything you want it to be. You can turn Seattle into Phoenix, if you’d like.

Google AdWords: Click-to-Teleport

The AdWords team has a new extension called Click-to-Teleport that lets “potential customers to instantly teleport to your business location directly from a search ad.”

The YouTube Collection

YouTube’s annual April Fool’s Day prank is the YouTube Collection — all of YouTube on DVD. Once you order, 175 trucks will deliver the DVDs right to your door. Oh, just watch the video. Make your checks payable to “Matt McGee” if you’re planning to order.

Play Music In Google Analytics

I’m not seeing this (yet?) in my Google Analytics account, but this Aussie blog says there’s a little music icon on the Visitors Overview page in Google Analytics. You can play a piano or sitar while enjoying (or bemoaning) your website’s performance.

Google Chrome Multitask Mode

The Google Chrome team thinks one mouse/hand isn’t enough for web browsing, so they’ve launched Multitask Mode — two mice/hands at once.

Gmail Tap

Gmail Tap converts your keyboard from 26 letters to just two — dots and dashes, just like Morse code.

Google Fiber Bar

Forget that fiber optic network thing. Google Fiber is actually just a fiber-filled candy bar that helps you be up to 100 times more productive than ever before.

That’s Not All…

There are other search-related April Fool’s Day gags, perhaps my favorite of which is Google Nigeria, which jokingly asks you to input your bank account number so you can “search for inheritance.”

Don’t be alarmed: the search box just runs a normal Google search (not that you’d actually put your bank account number in there, anyway, right?) and, while this is NOT an official Google gag, it also doesn’t appear to be run by some Nigerian prince. (It’s a production from 85by55.com.)

There’s also TheGoogleButton.com, which lets you make a fake Google search result page with whatever website (and title/snippet) you want in the No. 1 spot.

Flickr has announced that all photos can now be seen in the 1980s style “Atkinson dither,” accessible via a small button in the lower right part of any photo page.

And last, and probably not least, the folks at Reddit announced “reddit timeline,” which brings a touch of Facebook to the proceedings and is pretty funny — especially when you click on “1970s” and get the animated rainbow header, along with “news” about Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the war in Vietnam.

And now that April Fool’s Day has actually begun … time to sign-off, at least until the next prank comes along.

Postscript:

As expected, we have a few more pranks to add and they all come from Google. Here you go!

GoRo: Google Mobile

Google Mobile has introduced a program called GoRo — the name is a play on the actual “Go Mo” campaign — that encouraged business owners to learn how to optimize their websites for rotary phones. Why? Because “technology is cyclical.”

Google Analytics: Interplanetary Reporting

Google Analytics jokingly wrote about a sneak preview of “interplanetary reports” that let website owners “understand visitor activities from neighboring stars and planets.”

Interplanetary reports will be rolled out in 2030, Google says, “when we anticipate local space travel becomes widespread.” Heh. Watch them be right about that part.

Google AdWords: Planetary Targeting

The AdWords folks didn’t stop just with Click-to-Teleport (see above). Oh no, there’s more. If you login to your AdWords account and edit location settings on one of your campaigns, you’ll see a joke about being able to do planetary targeting.

And yes, if you follow through and type “Mars,” for examplem, it shows up as one of the targeting options. There’s even a fake support page explaining how it all “works.”

At least I think it’s fake. Who can tell anymore?

Part of the joke is actually real, as I found out Monday when my friendly mailman visited Casa McGee. Much to my surprise, and probably to the mailman’s curiosity, there was a non-descript white envelope with a mailing label that said it’s from “Everybody Chromercise” at an address in Aurora, Colorado.

The Chromercise.com website that Google launched as part of the gag included a form where you could order a set of these finger sweatbands. I assumed it was a dead-end and put my name and address in just to see what would happen.

Lo and behold, this part of the joke was real!

I’m now the proud (I think?) owner of Google Chrome finger sweatbands. And, more impressive — I’m actually typing this story right now with the bands on my right hand!

But sorry, Google … I’m on Firefox.

Readers, I know what you’re thinking: Can I order my own set of free Google Chrome Finger Sweatbands and be cool like Matt?

Answer: No. I’m sorry to report that the order form has been taken down, no doubt due to overwhelming demand … demand that has pushed the value of these finger sweatbands all the way up to $3.99 per set on eBay at the moment. Happy shopping!

The April Fools joke begins with a page explaining that Google has conducted research into various fonts and found through eye tracking that Comic Sans beats other fonts:

Comic Sans For Everyone!

More fun comes in the form of an extension from Google for its Google Chrome browser. Install Comic Sans For Everyone, and all your search results will appear with that font:

But it’s not just search results that change. Any site you go to will be Comic Sansified. Here’s the Search Engine Land home page:

Comic Sans, Automagically

Don’t want to install the extension? Comic Sans might take over your search results anyway. Search for comic sans, and you’ll get results in that font, no extension needed:

Looks like the “Ban Comic Sans” site listed in those results picked the wrong week for Google to be reporting it has malware:

No fooling, they should read our article to solve this, Google Explains Malware Warning Policy & How To Fix Your Site.

Take That, Helvetica

Finally, perhaps the best part of all this. Search for helvetica, and that will turn your results into Comic Sans on Google, automatically:

If you don’t see this happening automatically, try closing your browser and restarting. Still no luck? Try another browser, or try visiting a different Google service, like Google UK. I couldn’t get it to work originally for me until I did a browser restart.

Seriously, Why Do We Hate Comic Sans?

By the way, if you’re curious why people seem to hate Comic Sans so much, here’s a funny and enlightening five minute video from Mykl Roventine on the topic

Click here to view the embedded video.

But wait, there’s more. Here’s another short video on the topic, from David Kadavy (who also wrote a good article on the topic, Why You Hate Comic Sans):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fool Me More!

For other April Fools pranks today from Google and around the search world, see our post below:

• It’s Over: Google Has Already Won April Fools Day 2011

Google Hiring Autocompleters

If you search with Google Instant turned on, you’ll see a new link at the bottom of the search suggestions. Google is hiring Autocompleters.

That link leads to a job description with this video introducing “Michael Taylor,” who started out as a spellchecker who typed the “Did you mean?” suggestions and then got a promotion to Autocompleter.

Gmail Motion

Even better is the video for Gmail Motion, a link that shows up on the Gmail login page.

Chromercise

Then there’s the Richard Simmons-esque video for Chromercise, an exercise program that helps your fingers keep up with Chrome’s speed. And yes, there’s a form to “order” a set of those dorky finger sweatbands. (I have no idea if the form is real; probably not, but I did give my name and address. In the name of journalism, of course. The things I do for our readers.)

YouTube 1911

YouTube pretending to be 100 years old with a guest blog post from President Taft and a recap of the Top 5 Viral Videos of 1911.

Google Goes Comic Sans

Google “announces” that it will shift to the Comic Sans font across all web properties on April 4th — and for searches on “Comic Sans” and “Helvetica,” it actually happens. See our separate article: For April Fools, Google Goes Comic Sans & Ousts Helvetica.

“Old School” AdWords Formats

Announced are “new” old-school display ad formats like “Punch the monkey” and “Click here for smileys.”

Google UK’s “Translate For Animals”

Some are noticing that Google UK got its April Fool’s mojo on with Google Translate for Animals, an Android app (not really, duh) that tells you what your pets/animals said in human language. That’s actually from last year.

Flickr Logo with an E:

CuttsCon Is Back!

The celebration of AllThingsMatt returns for a a second show:

Details over here.

Google China Teleport Search

Details over here.

Earkut (Orkut)

Details over here.

Google Voice-alyzer

Pink Elephant & Yellow Whale on Google Maps

Details here and here. Official details over here.

Google Docs Motion Commands

Details over here.

Google Help Rolling Heads

Details over here.

Google Body Browser: Now A Cow

Details over here.

Google Blimp Ads

Details over here.

Google Bambo Update

Details over here.

Foursquare No Points For You

Search Engine Roundtable Now Search Engine Land

Details over here.

Matt Cutts working as Ask Jeeves

Details over here.

Chrome Lite

Details over here.

Wolfram Alpha As Bieber Alpha

Details over here.

The Search Specialists Movie

Details over here.

LinkedIn People You May Know

Google Pig Latin Voice Search

Click here to view the embedded video.

Details over here.

Google Meow Me Now (find missing kittens)

Details over here.

Google Analytics Gift Cards

Details over here.

Google I/O Conference Agenda

Even the upcoming Google I/O Conference is in on the fun, posting a joke agenda with sessions about HTML 3, building server farms with legos and more.

Google Bans Google Places

From TechCrunch, a funny send-up on how Google is banning its own Google Places pages as content farm spam: Google Inadvertently Classifies Google Places As A “Content Farm” And Removes From Search Index, plus a follow-up post: Richard Rosenblatt: Seriously, Leave My Yacht Out Of This. There’s also a solution to that yacht problem: How To Leave Your Yacht Out Of A TechCrunch Story.

More April Fools!

Looking for more pranks? See our other breakout posts on April Fools pranks from this year and our posts from past years:

• April Fools Day 2011, Google Goes Comic Sans & Ousts Helvetica
• April Fools Day 2010: Google Books, Google Maps Get 3D View
• April Fools Day 2009: Google CADIE & More From Search Industry

Here’s what I encountered:

See the “View in 3D” link? Click on that, and you get this:

When viewed with the glasses I was given (standard paper 3D ones), sure, I guess it’s a little 3Dish.

I looked again through Google Books and found this 3D view option everywhere I looked. And for something like this Life Magazine cover, it worked pretty good:

Of course, I can’t show you the 3D view I can see with the glasses on. But find a pair of glasses, and then you can judge for yourself.

I don’t think this is an April Fool’s joke, but we’ll see. I also wonder if we’ll see it on other Google properties like Google Maps, as I suspected. More later. I’ve got a science project to help finish!

Postscript: The Next Web has a screenshot showing a 3D view in Google Street View, so apparently that’s coming. I’ve not been able to replicate this, myself — to get the small “3D man” icon to appear and enable a 3D view. I suspect this will rollout further on April 1 to more people.

Postscript 2: The Google Book Search blog now has confirmation of the new feature.

See related news at Techmeme.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: The Google blog announced this new 3D street view feature. Here is a picture of how it looks on Google Maps:

It won’t last long, however. Google tells us 3D view in Google Maps and Google Books is only being offered on April Fool’s Day this year, April 1 — and from midnight to midnight in each time zone. But 3D view in Street View might occasionally be offered as “Easter Egg” surprises.

It’s not real. But I sure wish it were, Google going all Kanye West on people searching for Taylor Swift.

In the mockup above you can see Google responding “I’m really happy for you, and I’m gonna let you finish your search, but did you mean: beyonce” instead of the usual “Did You Mean” spelling correction.

The mockup is from the I Am Bored site, which I found via this discussion by Jess Lee on FriendFeed. And while that might entirely fictional (trust me, it is — I’ve tried to reproduce it in various ways. Not. Real.), Yahoo kind of goes all Kanye on its competitors in real life.

Search for Google on Yahoo, and you get this:

Search for Bing, and you get this:

In both cases, Yahoo puts up a box to let you search through Yahoo rather than going directly to its competitors. It’s gonna let you finish going to them, but first….

Kanye’s actually following in Yahoo’s footsteps. Yahoo’s been interrupting searches like this for ages.

With Google, it all starts with their announcement on the launch of CADIE, which is short for Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. The write up is extremely geeky, but it basically means that they designed an intelligent computer that is smart enough to do things on its own. This concept expands into dozens of different Google property hoaxes including:

• The CADIE developed 3D Chrome browser
• Auto-pilot Gmail
• Google Brain Search mobile
• Upside down YouTube (more on that here)
• Google Australia’s gBall
• How CADIE connects on video
• CADIE’s hilarious personal blog
• CADIE’s favorite places on Google Maps
• Google’s Knol was taken over by CADIE
• It improved Google Docs
• The pigeon was added by CADIE to Google China
• CADIE made it to Japan.
• Picasa added auto-red eye addition (not reduction)
• Google Earth has CADIE as well.
• CADIE even overtook the Google twitter account.

Google Blogscoped covered many of the Google April Fools gimmicks, as did Google Operating System.

There are also dozens of non-official Google hoaxes, which you can find in TechCrunch’s post. That covers most of Google’s April Fools’ day gimmicks.

Let’s move on to Yahoo, which launched a new search service named Ideological Search. Ideological Search basically allows searchers to “control the ideology of their search results for the first time in search technology history.” Pretty clever.

Live.com redid their home page, which is simple and works:

And Live Search rebranded as “MSN Windows Live Search on kumo@microsoft.com.”

Others:

• Reddit looks just like Digg, now that is funny.
• Cre8asite Forums is now Cre8aBanana forums
• Search Engine Roundtable scares users with kernel panics for Mac users and blue screen of death for PC users
• Quniura Blog highlights Yandex, Quintura and Google Russia’s pranks.
• Even us at Search Engine Land have our own hoax in the article named Search Community Outrage Builds Over Proposed New Match Types.

We hope to keep updating this post to collect more search industry specific April Fool’s day topics. Feel free to add more in the comments area.

To see last year’s pranks, click here. To see a full timeline of Google’s April Fool’s Day hoaxes, see Wikipedia.

The move is part of Google’s larger effort to let business owners and the community in general take more control of Maps data and listings in an effort to improve their accuracy and quality.

Postscript: Mike caught us out! It was an April Fool’s joke, as it turns out.

Called the "$1 Million Guarantee Program," the initiative will reward anyone within the United States that agrees to have web surfing monitoring software hooked to their computer. To allay privacy concerns, the software will watch for only one thing — use of Google and other non-Microsoft search engines.

Under the program, people can earn up to $1 million per year if they exclusively use Microsoft’s search products. The program is open to any US resident aged 6 and above. There will be some provisions for "accidental" or "occasional" visits to non-Microsoft services. But by and large, the deal is that by being exclusive to Microsoft, Microsoft will reward users with cold hard cash.

Absurdly expensive? It can seem that way at first, but consider the math. There’s an estimated 300 million people living in the United States. If you pay each one $1 million for the next three years, that’s just under $1 billion. That saves Microsoft $39 billion compared to what it was going to spend on purchasing Yahoo.

The US isn’t the limit for Microsoft rebels behind the plan. The world population is just under 7 billion. Give each person $1 million for three years and that’s still only half the price of purchasing Yahoo. However, Microsoft figures that it could use a sliding scale for some countries. Where the cost of living is less expensive, less would be given out. And places where the US dollar is not longer worth as much (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union …. it’s a long list), slightly more might be given.

The main reason Microsoft plans to start with the US are the legalities. So far, they can’t find any US law that would prevent them from paying for exclusivity in this way. Technically, they aren’t paying for people NOT to use Google. They’re paying for people to be loyal to Microsoft, which would seem to clear some regulatory hurdles. After the US, they would examine issues with other major markets.

So far, there’s no reaction from the Google side. Google’s issue is that it has far less cash on hand to use to bribe people for loyalty. Instead, Google’s been relying on simply giving products away, such as Google Docs that just gained offline access today (and see here). But with cold hard cash being offered by Microsoft, especially during a time of economic turmoil, Google might face the most serious challenge in its history.

Microsoft’s plans are still a work in progress and yet to be approved. If they are, the hope is that the program will be formally unveiled a year from today, April 1, 2009.

Postscript: Of course, one fatal flaw in this plan. The math makes no sense at all. At $1 million per person for even one year, it’s like $300,000,000,000,000. I don’t even know what you call that. $300 trillion? Just $10 per person for one year would be like $3 billion. If I’m doing the math right. And I’m probably not. Did I mention being an English major?