While Google was quick to pull the April Fools' joke in Gmail that caused a massive backlash and led some to possibly lose their jobs, it has now offered a detailed explanation of what went wrong, along with a couple more mea culpas.
The Gmail joke added a "Send & Mic Drop" button right next to the "Send" button. Selecting it, accidentally or not, would add a GIF of a minion from Despicable Me and mute the email thread.
The joke button feature wasn't rolled out to Google Apps' government, education and business users, however, it did cause chaos for some personal accounts, including those who use it for professional purposes, including job applications.
In a second update to a post that announced the feature, Google admitted it shouldn't have placed the joke button so close to the "Send" and "Send & Archive" buttons. It also said it should have built in a confirmation option to avoid confusion regarding the button.
"We realize many of you use Gmail for very important messages, and we are sorry if Mic Drop was in any way harmful to you," Google said.
The search giant also admitted that compounding the issue was a bug with the feature that ended up adding the GIF automatically (though it was only in rare instances) even when a user selected the standard "Send" button.
"Again, sorry. We love April Fools jokes at Google, and we regret that this joke missed the mark and disappointed you," Google said, though it might be too little, too late for some users.
Top image credit: Codex41/Flickr (cropped image)
