Google has already killed its controversial "mic drop" April Fools' joke from Gmail, but the company went even further this afternoon with a detailed apology and a post-mortem on what went wrong. Attached as an update to the top of the original Gmail blog post, the apology explains how the joke feature, which added an obnoxiousDespicable Me minion GIF to emails and then muted the thread, was causing havoc on people's personal and professional lives due to critical oversights.
Google says the feature should not have been placed near much-used Gmail buttons like "Send" and "Send & Archive." The company also admits to having failed at building safeguards, such as asking Gmail users to turn the feature on and confirming it was active before sending a mic drop message. Lastly, Google came clean about a bug that would include the minion GIF even without pressing the mic drop option. If a user accidentally clicked the joke button within a new compose message with no recipients, the GIF would still attach itself to that message after recipients were added and the standard send button was clicked.
GOOGLE'S APRIL FOOLS' DAY PRANK BACKFIRES IN A BIG WAY
"Again, sorry. We love April Fools jokes at Google, and we regret that this joke missed the mark and disappointed you," the company wrote in conclusion.
As they say, it's all fun and games until someone sends a minion GIF to their boss and loses their job, as one professional writer on Google's forums claims happened to him when he sent in a draft.