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Microsoft Says No to April Fool's Day

posted by martyb on Monday April 01 2019, @12:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-kidding! dept.

takyon writes:

Microsoft leads the way in banning April Fools' Day pranks

Everyone hates April Fools' Day, and Microsoft is taking a stand against its own corporate pranks. Microsoft's marketing chief Chris Capossela has warned all employees to not participate in the process of annoying hoaxes on Monday. In an internal memo, obtained and verified by The Verge, Capossela explains that "data tells us these stunts have limited positive impact and can actually result in unwanted news cycles." He encourages all teams inside Microsoft not to do any public-facing April Fools' Day stunts.

"I appreciate that people may have devoted time and resources to these activities, but I believe we have more to lose than gain by attempting to be funny on this one day," says Capossela. That's probably a safe bet, as we've seen some April Fools' Day pranks backfire spectacularly in the past. Google was forced to apologize for adding Despicable Me minions into emails and muting threads a few years ago, causing email havoc for Gmail users. Microsoft has also participated in many April Fools' Day pranks over the years, including an MS-DOS mobile for Windows Phone and Google insults.

#FakeNews?

Also at BGR.

See also: Everyone Should Follow Microsoft's Lead in Banning April Fools' Day Pranks

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday April 01 2019, @01:40AM (4 children)

    by Gaaark (41) on Monday April 01 2019, @01:40AM (#822930) Journal

    Came to wonder the same thing, but with ALL versions of Windows.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Apparition on Monday April 01 2019, @01:55AM (1 child)

    by Apparition (6835) on Monday April 01 2019, @01:55AM (#822939) Journal

    To be fair, Windows 2000 Professional was a good OS. That was about it though.

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:41AM

      by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:41AM (#823388) Homepage Journal

      Yeah, I carried on using Win2k for as long as possible. Quite a few supposedly XP-only applications could be coaxed into running on it (usually just forgoing the installer that checks the OS version and manually copying the program files into place).

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 01 2019, @01:56AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 01 2019, @01:56AM (#822940) Journal
    Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me, like 10+ times, just get the popcorn and sigh again.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @02:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @02:18AM (#822948)

    Windows 3.11 was pretty ok, not sure if it was an OS or an application. But it could play music and I could get on gopher. Also Chip's Challenge was pretty sweet as well as skiFree, which is the first game I decompiled and added more blood.