Google Changed its Name to Topeka | April Fools Joke
Google wrote a post from their official blog; “Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.
We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.
In fact, Topeka Google Mayor Bill Bunten expressed it best: “Don’t be fooled. Even Google recognizes that all roads lead to Kansas, not just yellow brick ones.”
For 150 years, its fortuitous location at the confluence of the Kansas River and the Oregon Trail has made the city formerly known as Topeka a key jumping-off point to the new world of the West, just as for 150 months the company formerly known as Google has been a key jumping-off point to the new world of the web. When in 1858 a crucial bridge built across the Kansas River was destroyed by flooding mere months later, it was promptly rebuilt — and we too are accustomed to releasing 2.0 versions of software after stormy feedback on our ‘beta’ releases. And just as the town’s nickname is “Top City,” and the word “topeka” itself derives from a term used by the Kansa and Ioway tribes to refer to “a good place to dig for potatoes,” we’d like to think that our website is one of the web’s top places to dig for information.
In the early 20th century, the former Topeka enjoyed a remarkable run of political prominence, gracing the nation with Margaret Hill McCarter, the first woman to address a national political convention (1920, Republican); Charles Curtis, the only Native American ever to serve as vice president (’29 to ‘33, under Herbert Hoover); Carrie Nation, leader of the old temperance movement (and wielder of American history’s most famous hatchet); and, most important, Alfred E. Neuman, arguably the most influential figure to an entire generation of Americans. We couldn’t be happier to add our own chapter to this storied history.” Read The Rest here
And Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch didn’t like the joke like many things on Earth. He says; “Come on Google, you can do better.” This time he is right indeed.
Why is this Joke?
On March 1, 2010, Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten issued a proclamation calling for Topeka to be known for the month of March as “Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber optics.” The name change was inspired by a previous name change in 1998 to “Topikachu” in honor of the Pokémon franchise.[7] This was to help “support continuing efforts to bring Google‘s fiber experiment” to Topeka, though it was not a legal name change. Lawyers advised the city council and mayor against an official name change.[8] Google announced that it would change its name to Topeka to “honor that moving gesture” at 1 am on 1 April 2010 / via Wikipedia
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It’s an April fools joke! No way they changed the name of Topeka, Kansas to Google and no way Google changed their name to Topeka, good one Google!
they really had me going 4 a min thin i realised that this was this years april fools joke
Fooled me. But if you had actually done it, you’d have been Topekites, not Topekans or that other wrong name. Tow Pee Kytes.
[...] Google Changed its Name to Topeka | April Fools Joke [...]
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Thanks for reminding me that today is April Fools Day!! I knew this was a joke, didn’t fool me.
FANTASTIC – I really appreciate these corporate-level gags; has anyone noticed the search statistics – “17,000,000 hits, 2.0 shakes of a lamb’s tail”. What I liked the best was the list of Topeka’s mayors (Alfred E. Neumann – there’s a blast from the past!).
it’s really a good thought.and it’s also original.I’m looking forward for your next post!it must be very interesting too !
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