I Topeka-ed Myself On The First Of April, 2010

Eric Schmidt at The Topeka Blog:

Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.

We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.

In fact, Topeka Google Mayor Bill Bunten expressed it best: “Don’t be fooled. Even Google recognizes that all roads lead to Kansas, not just yellow brick ones.”

For 150 years, its fortuitous location at the confluence of the Kansas River and the Oregon Trail has made the city formerly known as Topeka a key jumping-off point to the new world of the West, just as for 150 months the company formerly known as Google has been a key jumping-off point to the new world of the web. When in 1858 a crucial bridge built across the Kansas River was destroyed by flooding mere months later, it was promptly rebuilt — and we too are accustomed to releasing 2.0 versions of software after stormy feedback on our ‘beta’ releases. And just as the town’s nickname is “Top City,” and the word “topeka” itself derives from a term used by the Kansa and Ioway tribes to refer to “a good place to dig for potatoes,” we’d like to think that our website is one of the web’s top places to dig for information.

In the early 20th century, the former Topeka enjoyed a remarkable run of political prominence, gracing the nation with Margaret Hill McCarter, the first woman to address a national political convention (1920, Republican); Charles Curtis, the only Native American ever to serve as vice president (’29 to ‘33, under Herbert Hoover); Carrie Nation, leader of the old temperance movement (and wielder of American history’s most famous hatchet); and, most important, Alfred E. Neuman, arguably the most influential figure to an entire generation of Americans. We couldn’t be happier to add our own chapter to this storied history.

Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing:

Also, Googlers are henceforth to be known as Topekans. Employees of Topeka who were originally from Kansas, be prepared for long, confusing conversations with your parents. No word on how this will affect stock holders. But if things go poorly, and you end up owning a hunk of the Sunflower State, the Konza Prairie is lovely this time of year. Just saying.

Chris Thompson at The Big Money:

Wow, wotta riot. Call me a big sourpuss, but Schmidt’s punchlines are going over like a fleet of lead zeppelins, if you ask me. Nonetheless, according to Google News, this rather tepid joke has prompted some 868 journalists around the world to write stories about the company’s famous sense of fun. The real story here isn’t that the company can really cut loose when it wants to, but that people are so compulsively fascinated by Google that it could change its make of company cars from Toyota to Honda and still get a front page story in the Wall Street Journal. What other company can so easily command such attention?

John Hudson at The Atlantic:

The bigger question now: Does this mean Topeka, Kansas is going to win Google’s broadband sweepstakes? Our former colleague Carl Franzen‘s hunch is yes. He argued that to deprive Topeka of the prize now would amount to merciless teasing.

However, our competing theory posits that Google executives already know Topeka isn’t getting the network. Not wanting to leave the city completely jilted after such blatant pandering, Google’s giving the town an April Fool’s consolation prize. But hey, it’s anyone’s guess

Michael Arrington at Tech Crunch:

Google Topeka? Not so funny. They’ve changed their logo on the Google homepage to Topeka and give this link as an explanation. They’ve changed their corporate name, they say, to Topeka for the day.

The problem is the whole joke is really just a way to promote Google’s experimental fiber network. 1,100 cities are begging to be part of the program and doing crazy things, like renaming their city name to Google, to get picked.

We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.

Anyway, if you’re promoting your own stuff on April Fools you need to be extra funny. This isn’t extra funny.

And what happened to Google Jail? As far as I can tell it remains unannounced. Maybe they got mad that Fast Company scooped them on their own joke. Or maybe someone at Google decided it was a bad idea to mock the horrific prison situation here in the U.S.

We’re grading this one an “D-” on our list of 2010 April Fools jokes. I need Google to go back to basics and get April Fools right again. This is too important not to do it right.

Tech Crunch:

It’s time for April Fools 2010!  We’re constantly updating this page with new April Fools jokes as we find them. If you spot a good one please leave it in the comments. Thanks!

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Google Search

Google really has their nerd on today and I love it. Search anything on their main search engine, and instead of telling you the amount of time it took to run your search it will use an arbitrary term like “jiffies” or “epochs.” Update: Google has renamed itself as Topeka.

Our Grade: D-

Google Books

In Google Books there’s an option to see the text/images in 3D.

Our Grade: B

GoogleDocs

GoogleDocs takes cloud computing to the next level. Upload anything, literally: “Store your keys, remotes, rail passes, and other objects you commonly lose with Google Docs, and you’ll never have to worry about finding them again. “

Our Grade: B+

Starbucks

Starbucks is now offering “micra” and “plenty” (128 fl. oz – think popcorn bucket) sizes. “Whether customers are looking for a large or small size, the Plenta and the Micra satisfy all U.S. and Canada customers’ needs for more and less coffee,” said Hugh Mungis, Starbucks VP of Volume. “Our size selection is now plentiful.”

Our Grade: B+

Wikipedia

Check out Wikipedia’s main page. Featured article is one on “wife-selling.” “Excerpt: “Along with other English customs, wife selling was exported to England’s American colonies, where one man sold his wife for “two dollars and half [a] dozen bowls of grogg.’”
Our Grade: A

Glynnis MacNicol at Mediaite:

B-list celebrities better keep a sharp eye out today, Twitter is celebrating its first April Fool’s Day as a full blown mass media force and killing off the ‘where are they now’ famous among us is just the sort of festivity Twitter revels in. To that end, I feel obligated to tell you that Chuck Norris is not dead. Or paralyzed for life. Or anything other than his normal (ish), fighting, Huckabee supporting, self.