April Fools Stories I Wish Were True

I hate April Fools Day. I simply don’t find it funny or see the point. My pain is now being mocked with Yahoo’s report that April Fools’ Day tomfoolery is up 40 percent this year. That means there are 40 percent more people and blogs going out of their way to act like schoolchildren. I’ll give you a dollar to shoot me in the face.

If April Fools Day came complete with costumes or awesome over the knee toe socks, perhaps I’d be more inclined to get in the spirit. But it doesn’t so I’m not a fan. All it does is make people look stupid, especially bloggers. Do you know what the top story on TechMeme was this morning? It looked like this:

Yes. A fake one about Microsoft and Yahoo agreeing on a buyout price.

And do you know what the hot topic of debate on Twitter was when I woke up this morning? The false news report on TechCrunch that Michael Arrington was suing Facebook for $25 million. Do you see why this is annoying? It makes us look like morons when we can’t decipher fact from fiction. When bloggers skim a blog entry without realizing the subtle clues of its falsehood and then report it as fact. Do you know how frustrating it is as a blogger to go through your RSS feed and realize that half the posts in there are crap? Better yet, Loren Baker did a Google News search for [google] and came up with this mess. Good lord. No wonder people get confused.

I really wish we could keep April Fools Day out of the news, but apparently we can’t. So, I’m going to stop complaining and in the spirit of "if you can’t beat them, join them", here are the FAKE news stories that I wish were TRUE.

• Microsoft’s $1 Million Guarantee Program To Win Searchers: This one was from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land and was perhaps the only "news" story to get a smile from me. The story here is that Microsoft has decided it would be cheaper to pay users up to a $1 million a year to use Microsoft exclusively than to go and up their Yahoo bid. Of course, this logic uses some very flawed math by Danny, but it’s all well and good.

  So this is obviously fiction, but how awesome would it be if this tidbit was true? We could all quit our jobs and go home and surf MSN Live all day. Of course, we’d have to have a secret identity set up so that we could search Google in order to actually find any real information. I can’t imagine the horror that would ensue if people were actually forced to trust and live off of Live’s search results. I can’t even process that. Scary stuff.

• Berkowitz Replaced By Jim Lanzone at Microsoft: At Search Engine Roundtable, Ben Pfeiffer says that Jim Lanzone has been tasked to replaced Steve Berkowitz as Senior Vice President of Microsoft Online Services. Ben notes that both Steve and Jim have previously held the position as CEO of Ask so today’s decision would be something of a round robin effect.

  Oh, how I wish this was true and Jim Lanzone was going to step back into the spotlight. If I were Ben, I would have tweaked the story so it was Jim was replacing the evil Barry Diller but I’ll take what I can get. Jim Lanzone back in search would have made my heart flutter. I mean if Jim was taking over Microsoft, which was then going to swallow up Yahoo, it would be mean he would be directly in charge of knocking Google out of their number one position. And with the strengths of Microsoft and Yahoo and Jim combined – you know they could totally do it. Someone should get on this for reals.

  Oh well. I’ll keep dreaming.

• Google to Consolidate SEO Industry: Tom Tsinas spreads that in order to acquire complete control over the search engine optimization industry and get us ragamuffin SEOs under control, Google will start offering SEO services. But Tom doesn’t stop here. Oh no. He always shares that Google is also interested in acquiring several "leaders of search" to help them grow this new SEO department. Who are they interested in? Folks like Marty Weintraub, Matt McGee, Shana Albert, Jeff Quipp and a slew of others.

  The number one reason this has to be false: They’re not going after Michael Gray. C’mon, if Google was going to jump into the SEO realm with both feet (as opposed to just dipping their toe in like they’re doing now), they would have recruited Michael Gray. Even if they’re not going to use him in any professional capacity. They’d pretend they were and then they’d lock him in the basement to keep him from causing trouble. You know it’s true!

• Exclusive: Google’s Index Now On Your Wristwith GWatch Launch: This gem is brought to us by Andy Beal who suggests that Google has released a USB Search Watch that retails for $89 and allows users to use a modified Google API to view local search results on their phone. There also appears to be some kind of GOOG-411 integration, as well.

  Do I even have to say anything? That would be the epitome of awesome!

Ah, SEOS are such kidders. Really, really nerdy kidders. My advice to you: Don’t read anything in your feed reader today. Mark everything as read and start over tomorrow morning.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.