Google does it again; Virgin joins the party

PUNE, INDIA: The great playwright George Bernard Shaw was not wrong when he prophesied: "Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one? New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths."

Today, the first of April, 2008, Netizens got an invite to become a Virgle citizen from none other than Virgin and Google, one famous for its flamboyance, the other synonymous for hitting the Internet with creative concepts.

"For thousands of years, the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world's every last nook, cranny and subdivision,” read the invite.

An invitation

Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B.

So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

The project further invites users to learn how to become a Virgle Pioneer, test Pioneering potential, or join the Mission Control community that will help develop its “100 Year Plan.”

While this invite beckoned the reader enticingly enough to join the startup civilization as Virgle Pioneers seducing them even to fill a weird 15-question multiple choice quiz loaded with algaes and aliens, not everyone ended being set-up.

The gag-bag so far

Playing pranks is not easy. You need to be creative, elfish and a little bit on the lark, something that comes naturally to souls like Google or Virgin.

In fact, Google, apparently, has a legacy of pranks to its credit, if it can be said so. It has tried them all, be it a news of the Toilet Internet Service Provider with free in-home wireless broadband service connectivity via users' plumbing systems, or that of releasing a Gmail paper, a service where users of its Gmail e-mail service could get paper versions of their e-mail mailed to them.

Other such gags include, Google Australia announcing gDay, a feature which can access web pages before they are created or Google China creating a new Grassroots Search powered by real human or a scratch-and-sniff feature for certain books on Google books. In 2000, Google introduced the Mentalplex, suggesting that Google could now find search results by reading your mind.

In 2002 Google prank site introduced PigeonRank, a play on Google's ranking algorithm, PageRank that claimed that Google ranked search results based on the pecking of trained pigeons. There was also, according to some Fools’ Day buzz, a certain Google Gulp, a fictitious drink that claimed to increase the intelligence of the drinker.

In order to obtain a Google Gulp, one needed the cap of someone else's Google Gulp.

This was assumed to be a parody of Gmail, which was initially available by invitation only.

The latest in the kitty is along with Sir Branson announcing 'Project Virgle', with the goal of creating a permanent human settlement on Mars. The cosmic clown is not something entirely new though.

Google earlier has played another gag called Google Copernicus Center, claiming they were hiring for a job center on the moon.

So, continuing on the theme of space exploration, for 2008, Google went with "Virgle," an imaginary collaboration between Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The program intends to colonize Mars within 100 years.

Virgin too has not been virgin when it comes to playing pranks. The discount airline ran ads in newspapers offering the "no chair fare" - half priced fares for passengers willing to stand for the duration of the flight.

There were also free calf massages are offered for flights longer than two hours long for one-day limited offer.

“Some people are calling Virgle an 'interplanetary Noah's Ark,” said Virgin Group president and founder Sir Richard Branson, who conceived the new venture. "I'm one of them. It's a potentially remarkable business, but more than that, it's a glorious adventure. For me, Virgle evokes the spirit of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, who set sail looking for the New World. I do hope we'll be a bit more efficient about actually finding it, though."

Virgle, no matter how mischievous, does not have many chances of getting a foot in the top 10 list San Diego-based Museum of Hoaxes.

Not because this list ranks pranks for their notoriety, absurdity, and number of people duped, but because the whole Virgle idea is not that silly at all.

Posts and responses to the Virgle gag already hint that the idea is everything but stupid.

"This is absolutely one of the best April fools jokes I've seen on the net but after some thought, it may not be such a wacky idea. We might just need to start exploring other planets pretty soon. I mean, we need to have a back up plan... what if we allow our leaders to go into World War? What if nuclear weapons are one day detonated?" commented a respondent Saludos.

May be the Google or Virgin team is not just playing a harmless April 1 caper but exploring another big strategy out there.

More so, because, both Google and Virgin have avowed interests in the space with projects like Google Lunar X Prize, and Virgin Galactic that hopes to sell flights on sub-orbital space tours.

As Aquarion, another respondent to Virgle, alluded rightly, "…it would be such a daft maneuver by Branson and the Googlers to throw an egg in the face of our next logical step as humans. Conceptually, a trip to Mars is small potatoes... If they get intriguing responses from people, they'd possibly entertain turning it into a reality... Part of how the universe works (and this is becoming more and more apparent as we approach 2012) is that you throw something to the wall, and if people vibe on it, it gains mass of intention, and thusly, a life of it's own."

Now would the Virgle gag be the joke turned upside down, remains to be seen.

This post, which sigh fully regrets the hoax surely needs a read, "This finally would be a worthy project for Google's billions. How sad, how world wearyingly non-ambitious that it's all a joke!"

(pratimah@cybermedia.co.in)