There's a good way and a bad way to do an April Fools joke. On Monday, the automaker briefly posted, then removed, a draft press release on its website supposedly announcing it was changing its name to promote electric vehicles. VW then put out a media release Tuesday pledging to rebrand itself “Voltswagen” in the U.S. as “a public declaration of the company’s future-forward investment in e-mobility.” Later Tuesday, the company fessed up. “The renaming was designed to be an announcement in the spirit of April Fool’s Day,” VW said in a statement after removing the earlier release from its U.S. media site. It might have been a funny move if the announcement came out on April Fools rather than three days prior.
On the otherhand, Google, as per tradition, is known for its annual April Fools’ Day prank to celebrate the practical joke-based holiday. In 2013, Google Nose BETA, the company’s new fictional product, promises “to offer the sharpest olfactory experience available.” A video introducing Google Nose (viewable above) explains that the feature allows users to “search for smells.” Seems complicated, right? Well that’s because it is (it’s also fake). The product intersects “photons with infrasound waves” and “temporarily aligns molecules to emulate a particular scent.” The “mobile aroma indexing program” at the heart of the product has amassed a “15 million scentibyte database of smells from around the world.”
Credits:
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/3/31/bb-thejokeis-on-volkswagen-after-april-fools-name-change-debacle
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