Cost of Google's April fool's prank-Few million dollars

Google's April Fool day pranks have achieved legendary proportion. This year, some pranks were quite evident while some cleverly done. The most evident prank was, of course, the Virgle prank. It was so obvious that even a 10 year old would understand that it is a April fool joke.

So why would the brilliant guys at Google cook up such pranks which goes this way "Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars."

The answer is money. It is quite evident that Virgin inc. has paid Google to play this prank. With it's pay per click revenues wavering, Google has ventured into new territory almost like "get paid to blog". Just think about the number of links made by other site to this virgle page and amount of visitors due to this. It is easy advertising. This kind of unique advertising leaves a lasting impression of the brand on the users mind.

With Virgin inc. trying to enter eastern markets, this kind of advertising will help Richard Branson gather enough publicity for his company as Google is used by most internet users or because of the links made to the page by blogs and website.