Microsoft tells its employees to not participate in April Fools' day activities

As April approaches, people are no doubt getting excited for the final season of Game of Thrones and perhaps also Avengers: Endgame. However, the start of April is famous for another popular day which is, of course, April Fools' Day. While pranks on the day are made in good nature, some of them don't sit well with people, especially in Silicon Valley.[caption id="attachment_5952871" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

Microsoft adds NewsGuard to its mobile Edge browser to fight fake news. Image: Reuters[/caption]Microsoft’s marketing chief Chris Capossela has given a warning to all its employees for not participating in any public stunts on 1 April. “I appreciate that people may have devoted time and resources to these activities, but I believe we have more to lose than gain by attempting to be funny on this one day,” said Capossela.Instances of April Fools' day backfiring for tech giants have not gone unnoticed. Google famously was forced to apologise after putting Despicable Me minions into emails which caused somewhat of chaos for Gmail users and quite a people ended up losing their jobs.Capossela also said in his memo that "data tells us these (April Fools') stunts have limited positive impact and can actually result in unwanted news cycles."The news comes on the heels of the company 'resurrecting' the famous clipboard assistant on MS Office and then killing it a day later. A report by The Verge states that the “brand police” inside the company were not amused by the animated pack of stickers of Clippy that were circulating in the company's official chat software.