April Fools’ is called 1 aprilgrap in the Netherlands. The locals like to make jokes and fool people on the day, and they're particularly good at tech jokes, so I thought I'd round up some of the coolest ones.
To warm up, here are a few historical examples. In 2010, Heineken reported that their beer can now be brewed at home using Philips Senseo pod coffee makers.
On April 1, 2006, Friesland announced the introduction of the .fy top-level domain. The website www.sidf.fy was even launched for confirmation and was actually available for a while.
And in 1972, NOS joked that the government had decided to check whether tape recorder owners were recording music from the radio. It was strictly forbidden at the time, so the NOS offered technical assistance in overlaying a special tone to protect such illegal recordings. As a result, many people sent their tapes to the TV station.
While the above jokes are definitely funny, the further technology advances, the more some jokes begin to resemble what could possibly be the future.
The best self-mocking jokes about the Netherlands and technology belong to this particular tech giant. Some of these videos are already YouTube classics, but if you haven't heard of Google Wind and Google Tulip, now is the time to catch up.
Let's start with the 2016 video and the self-driving bicycle, designed to improve mobility in cities:
Google Wind is a 2017 joke about upgrading historic windmills with control modules connected to the Google Cloud Platform. The video says that Google Wind uses machine learning to recognise cloud structures and control a network of windmills as rain approaches. With the weather being one of the most frequently mentioned problems faced by those moving to the Netherlands, by promising "clear skies for everyone in Holland," Google has indeed raised a burning issue:
Another masterpiece from Google is Google Tulip, a tulip language decoder tested at the Keukenhof training ground. "No wonder Google Tulip was largely developed and tested in the Netherlands, a country that produces 12,5 billion flowers a year," the video says. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence and collaboration with Wageningen University, Google has allegedly learned to understand the public's favourite flower and provide translations of its language into dozens of human tongues:
The following video from Dutch fast food leaders New York Pizza Netherlands talks about 3D pizza printers supposedly installed at NS stations in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. With this innovation, the company is responding to the food production trends by offering to print fresh pizza on the way to your destination:
The April Fool's jokes from Coolblue, a local e-commerce company, also deserve a mention. This video presents an innovative sustainable solution: solar panels embedded in branded boxes and generating electricity:
Coolblue is actually committed to green energy - solar panels cover the roofs of their distribution centres.
On April 1, 2018, Coolblue announced the launch of its own bicycle delivery service. The release was presented as an April Fool's joke, but it turned out to be true: CoolblueFietst was indeed launched!
I have a feeling that in another couple of years, the made-up Kippiecopter, like any delivery drone, will actually become commonplace. But in 2018, this joke from Kippie, the grilled food shop, amused many people:
Closing out this selection is a topical prank about pigeon Wi-Fi. Dui-Fi (The Dutch word for pigeon is duif) is a collaboration between several companies that have teamed up to launch 88.000 pigeons with micro Wi-Fi hotspot backpacks. Birds move freely all over the country, so everyone and everywhere would be able to use free high-speed Wi-Fi. This 2019 joke doesn't have a video, but details of the idea are still available on the website.
It may be a bit of a silly tradition, but April 1 has certainly led to some funny jokes and pranks in the past. Will you be pulling any April Fool's pranks this year? Or are there any other notable jokes you think have been left off this list? Let us know in the comments!