An Apropriate Response when you've been April Fooled

I really like this humor and I am still laughing:

This Blog

Google Blogs

Web

Blog

News

This Blog

Google Blogs

Web

Blog

News

A different kind of company name

4/01/2010 12:01:00 AM

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.

A change this dramatic won’t happen without consequences, perhaps even some disruptions. Here are a few of the thorny issues that we hope everyone in the broader Topeka community will bear in mind as we begin one of the most important transitions in our company’s history:

• Correspondence to both our corporate headquarters and offices around the world should now be addressed to Topeka Inc., but otherwise can be addressed normally.
• Google employees once known as “Googlers” should now be referred to as either “Topekers” or “Topekans,” depending on the result of a board meeting that’s ongoing at this hour. Whatever the outcome, the conclusion is clear: we aren’t in Google anymore.
• Our new product names will take some getting used to. For instance, we’ll have to assure users of Topeka News and Topeka Maps that these services will continue to offer news and local information from across the globe. Topeka Talk, similarly, is an instant messaging product, not, say, a folksy midwestern morning show. And Project Virgle, our co-venture with Richard Branson and Virgin to launch the first permanent human colony on Mars, will henceforth be known as Project Vireka.
• We don’t really know what to tell Oliver Google Kai’s parents, except that, if you ask us, Oliver Topeka Kai would be a charming name for their little boy.
• As our lawyers remind us, branded product names can achieve such popularity as to risk losing their trademark status (see cellophane, zippers, trampolines, et al). So we hope all of you will do your best to remember our new name’s proper usage:

Finally, we want to be clear that this initiative is a one-shot deal that will have no bearing on which municipalities are chosen to participate in our experimental ultra-high-speed broadband project, to which Google, Kansas has been just one of many communities to apply.

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Topeka Inc.

 

 

This Spoof is in response to the Topeka campaign

The Spirit of April Fools

The Spirit of April Fools

This is April Fool's humor that I really like

Topeka 'renames' itself 'Google, Kansas'

By John D. Sutter, CNN

March 2, 2010 -- Updated 2115 GMT (0515 HKT)

A CNN photo illustration welcomes travelers to Topeka, which changed its name temporarily to attract a Google project.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Topeka, Kansas, renames itself "Google" for a month
  
• The unusual move is an attempt to get Google to invest in its broadband
  
• Google has announced a pilot program to speed up Internet access in the U.S.
  
• Topeka's mayor says the change will not be permanent

(CNN) -- At 79, Bill Bunten doesn't exactly understand the Internet boom. The Topeka, Kansas, mayor has an e-mail account, he said, but his assistants take care of most of his online communications and tend to search the Web for him.
But Bunten believes so firmly that younger residents of Kansas' capital city will benefit from faster Internet connections that he wants Topeka -- which he describes as a place of many lakes and the site of a burgeoning market for animal-food research -- to change its name for a month.
In a formal proclamation Monday, Bunten announced his city will be known as "Google" -- Google, Kansas.
"It's just fun. We're having a good time of it," he said of the unofficial name change, which will last through the end of March. "There's a lot of good things that are going on in our city."
The unusual move comes as several U.S. cities elbow for a spot in Google's new "Fiber for Communities" program. The Web giant is going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second.

Bill Bunten is the mayor of Topeka, Kansas, which is informally going by "Google" for a month.

RELATED TOPICS

• Google Inc.
• Topeka

Cities have until March 26 to tell Google they're interested in the venture. Google says it will pick one or more cities for the pilot project. "We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people," Google says in an online post.
The company has said U.S. Internet speeds are falling behind the global standard, and it wants to fix things itself by installing new broadband cable.
Bunten hopes the proclamation, which he read at a special City Council meeting on Monday, will catch Google's attention and make the Internet company decide to use Topeka as its guinea pig. The document renames Topeka as "Google, Kansas -- the capital city of fiber optics."
Google declined to comment on whether it's taking the whole "Google, Kansas" thing seriously.
The mayor believes that faster Internet connections would inspire young people to stay in the city and would encourage business development.
But Bunten laughed at the idea that he might make the name switch permanent if Google decides to invest in his 123,400-person city's Internet network.
"Oh, heavens no, Topeka?" he said during a phone interview. "We are very proud of our city and Topeka is an Indian word which means 'a good place to grow potatoes.' We're not going to change that."
Do people grow potatoes in Topeka these days?
"I don't think we grow that many potatoes anymore," he said. "The crops we have out here are wheat and corn and soybeans and alfalfa. And, did I say soybeans?"
This isn't the first time Topeka has switched its name to mark a cultural trend. In 1998, former mayor Joan Wagnon temporarily changed the name of the city to "ToPikachu, Kansas," in reference to the Pikachu anime character, from the show and game called "Pokemon," which was popular at the time, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Bunten, the current mayor, was quick to attribute that bizarre "ToPikachu" happening to another local administration.
"I read in the paper this morning that they did a similar thing a number of years ago. Hold on, maybe I can get this sorted out. Just a minute," he said, turning to an assistant for details.
"We did it for a day," he said, sounding perplexed. "I can't remember why."
On its face, changing the name of a city to "Google" may seem like a silly publicity stunt, but Bunten says there is a serious side to the idea. Faster Internet connections might just be Topeka's ticket to a hipper future.
He's the first to say outsiders probably view Topeka as "another Midwestern town with not a lot going on," but he's been making efforts to change that. He trying to revitalize downtown with a bar and music scene.
Google would add to all that, making the city more attractive to youngsters, he said.
"To have this high-speed where people can sit down and have lunch and still keep working is a positive for young people," he said. "The young people are the ones that caught onto this and go to the Internet and asked people in the city to sign on as supporting Google coming to Topeka."
Bunten also hopes super-fast Web connections will improve the city's image with outsiders.
He was quick to point out that, while Topeka is in northeastern Kansas and is geographically part of the Great Plains, the city is green and has hills and even lakes. It's not flat like the Kansas stereotype, he said.
"Kansas is what it is, but I was trying to explain to you down in Atlanta that Topeka is not on the prairie. Our rainfall here runs about 32 inches a year. If you get out to Manhattan [Kansas], where Kansas State University is, well, it gets flatter. The wheat fields go as far as you can see. But here it's not. There's lots of trees and lots of water and we're going to develop this riverfront into something very, very nice," he said.
Bunten was born in Topeka. He said he traveled with the military, visiting Japan, Korea, San Diego and Los Angeles, California, Washington state. He saw many nice places. But they were nothing compared to his home.
They couldn't match the community. That's why he chose to return to his Topeka after years away.

He hopes Topeka's young people will explore the world like he did. But he wants them to come back. And he hopes Google will be their magnet.

Google's response is equally humorous:

A different kind of company name