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Google embraces April Fools’ Day with Google Nose, YouTube closure and more

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Ah, so that’s what Google engineers do with their ‘20 percent time’ – think up wacky April Fools’ Day ideas like Google Nose, Treasure Mode for Maps, and Google Glass – no, wait, that last one made it through.

The Web giant has been busy rolling out lots of jokes and pranks  Monday, letting everyone know that it does indeed have a sense of humor.

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Check out Google Nose, for instance. “Smelling is believing”, Google says on a webpage dedicated to a product it calls “the new scentsation in search”. Under a photo of a woman filling her nostrils with an aroma emanating from her mobile phone, Google urges us to “go beyond type, talk, and touch for a new notation of sensation” and explore its Aromabase of more than 15 million “scentibytes”.

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Basically, Google Nose lets you search by smell and smell your search.

“By intersecting photons with infrasound waves, Google Nose temporarily aligns molecules to emulate a particular scent,” one Google engineer helpfully explains.

The Mountain View company has even taken the time to put together a video (below) explaining all about Google Nose. The thing is, one day, whether it’s in five years or 50, Google Nose won’t be a joke. It’ll be real.

The team has also come up with Google Maps Treasure Mode, a tool enabling you to find hidden treasure around the world (how about that?). Check out the video (below) for the weird, wacky and rather amusing ways you can help Google to crack the codes to reveal the locations of the treasure.

Oh, and Google-owned YouTube is closing down tonight. The site posted a video thanking everyone for their entries over the last eight years (it’s been one big long-running competition, you see) and wishes everyone luck in having their entry chosen as the world’s best video.

Google says its team of 30,000 technicians will spend the next 10 years going through the entries to find the best YouTube video. The winning entry will be posted on the site when it relaunches in 2023, and will be the only video on the site. The company put together an amusing little piece (below) for this joke too, which even features appearances by YouTube celebrities from years gone by.

There are plenty more Google gags too. Whereas most firms might roll out one joke on April Fools’ Day, the Web company has gone all out and evidently spent a few bucks on its efforts. Fall for any of them?

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