Many, including major web companies, took advantage of April Fools’ Day in 2008 as well. Several search engines, news websites and video services pulled pranks on their users. YouTube redirected all front page links to Rick Astley’s 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up,” the video’s views thus jumping to more than nine million. BBC’s April moment consisted of a video about a new breed of flying penguins.

Regarded by some as the best prank this year, we have the joint efforts of Google and Virgin. The two presented their Virgle project to colonise Mars with ”Virgle Pioneers.” It is obvious that the companies really worked on this, as they even created a special website and issued a press release. ”For me, Virgle evokes the spirit of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, who set sail looking for the New World. I do hope we'll be a bit more efficient about actually finding it, though” Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson declared. He went on to say: ”Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B.”

The project information was accompanied by a video starring Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in which the two encouraged interested ”pioneers” to submit their applications under the form of YouTube videos. Many people were quite disappointed to find out that everything was actually a joke.