Google's April Fool's prank this year had unintended consequences which made a lot of people angry rather than amused, and forced the company to take down the gag after a few hours.
The "Mic Drop" button, which would send a comical gif animation of Minions to the recipients of mail, was placed right besides the 'send' button on Gmail, and many people accidentally clicked on it.
The button would end the thread of the conversation as the senders would not be able to see it, because it was not meant to be showing in the Inbox by the Google, but only in the "All Mail" section.
"Everyone will get your message, but that's the last you'll ever hear about it. Yes, even if folks try to respond, you won't see it," Google explained in a blog post describing the antic.
A mic drop meme is popularly used by people who 'want to speak the last word,' in an argument or want to make a rebuttal, by dropping the microphone and walking away.
This is how Google put it: "Simply reply to any email using the new 'Send + Mic Drop' button. Everyone will get your message, but that's the last you'll ever hear about it. Yes, even if folks try to respond, you won't see it."
The problem was that many people mistakenly clicked the button while sending professional mails, and ended up in soup after doing that. Not surprisingly, the Google forum was filled with complaints before noon.
One Gmail customer was pretty ruffled, when she said: "I hit this thing by accident in a professional email sending a contract. This is ridiculous and not funny at all. Remove it please!!!"
Another user complained, "This is horrible -- just sent an email to a client with this stupid icon on it. I can't afford these stupid pranks!"
"I am a writer and had a deadline to meet. I sent my articles to my boss and never heard back from her. I inadvertently sent the email using the MicDrop send button," said one who too was upset.
Google decided to pull out the feature finally, and said in a statement: "Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We're truly sorry. The feature has been turned off. If you are still seeing it, please reload your Gmail page."
Previous years' Google projects on April 1 were awesome and well received, including a huggable panda as a digital assistant, and a playable version of Pacman on Google maps.
