Google cancels April Fool's Day in a show of solidarity for victims of COVID-19 pandemic

San Francisco, March 29 (IANS): Google has decided to cancel this year's April Fools prank day out of respect for those fighting new coronavirus pandemic globally.

An internal email from Google marketing head Lorraine Twohill reportedly said that Google is playing it straight on April 1, 2020 out of respect for those fighting the coronavirus, reports confirmed.

"We have already stopped any centralised April Fool's efforts but realise there may be smaller projects within teams that we don't know about.

"Make sure your teams pause on any jokes they may have planned — internally or externally," Twohill wrote.

"Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let's save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one," Twohill added.

Google usually goes all out on April 1, with numerous pranks across its many products.

The search engine giant has also updated its popular Duo chat app by increasing the group video user limit from 8 to 12 people into a single group call to help more people stay connected and practice social distancing.

The new 12-person limit compares to eight for house party, 32 for Apple's FaceTime, 50 for Skype and Messenger, and 100 for Zoom's free tier.