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Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 10:55 pm

Google Changes Name to Topeka

Don’t worry, it’s not a typo or a relevant headline for that matter, but with the advent that is April Fools Google decided to change its name to Topeka temporarily. So Google decided to play a prank and as expected people were entertained by this April Fools gesture. Why Topeka? Sources say Google was only returning the favor to the Kansas, Texas capital, which is actually the recipient of the “Fiber for Communities” program, a Google broadband test project that would give Topeka access to internet speeds 100 times faster than most networks provide.

Topeka was a candidate city to Google’s “Fiber for Communities” project so to attract Google’s attention the Kansas town of Topeka changed its name to “Google” for a month. And today being April Fools day Google simply returned the favor and displayed the name Topeka to the amusement of internet users worldwide. “We didn’t reach this decision lightly: after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied-up with our name,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He further adds: “But the more we surfed around the Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt to this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.”

Google has been known to play interesting pranks on April Fools through the years and this by far was entertaining at best. YouTube even offered their videos to be viewed in text mode, saying that by viewing in text mode, YouTube users would help the company save $1 per second in bandwidth costs. But that negates the purpose of “watching” videos does it? But YouTube is quick to say that users could go back in normal viewing mode by the click of a button. Oh well, happy April Fool’s day everyone!