Google gets ‘nosey’

Google gets ‘nosey’

Search engine Google has succeeded in fooling a lot of people by "launching a brand new search method, enabling users to search for smells". Unfortunately for those people, Google Nose was just one of the search engine's three April Fools’ jokes.

A smelly joke

“The new sensation: searching with your nose” is how world’s most popular search engine promoted its newest product. Descriptions such as “your internet sommelier”, a “Google Aromabase” with “more than 15 million scentibytes” and even a “SafeSearch, so you will not find any unwanted smells”, were meant to fool the world yesterday.


Google seemed to have spared no expense when they launched the beta version of Google Nose: “Street Sense vehicles have inhaled and indexed millions of atmospheric miles.” and an “Android Ambient Odor Detection collects smells via the world's most sensible mobile operating system”, all “SMELLCD™ 1.8+ high-resolution compatible for precise and controlled odours”.


And as a so-called product manager, Jon Wooly, admits in a video: “There was an important part of the search experience we had overlooked”. What was not to believe?


Glimpse of the future

“Because of the fast technological advancements, everything seems possible so companies can take a joke that much further”, says trend watcher Herman Konings in Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad. “Something that is a joke now, can be true within a few years”, he says while pointing to products as Google Glasses and 3D-printers: a few years ago they would also have been had to believe.


Google Nose was not the only April Fools’ joke from Google: the company also announced that YouTube actually was one big video contest in search of the best video and that now YouTube would be closed to decide on a winner, who would be announced in 2023 at the reopening of the website.


Furthermore, there also was ‘Google Treasure Map’: a treasure map by unknown pirate William ‘Captain’ Kid. Google said it discovered the map while recording their underwater StreetView near Madagascar. It was said to lead to a plethora of treasures. It must be said: April Fools' Day has proved to be a fruitful day for the American online giant...