Health, Safety & the Environment

Gotcha!  What is happening?  With morning coffee in hand, I tuned into my Google browser on my PC and saw TOPEKA instead of Google??   What was happening?  Under the search engine window, a note read, Not In Kansas: learn about our new name.  Clicking on the link to our new name, I was directed to a Google Press Release that read in part:

“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”

I explored further.  Had Topeka, Kansas really changed its name to Google?  As discussed in a CNN article earlier this month, the Topeka, er, Google formally made the name change.  The Mayor of Google described the benefits that he hoped would result from the name change, ie. that younger residents of Kansas’ capital city will benefit from faster Internet connections that he seeks for his city – which he describes as a place of many lakes and the site of a burgeoning market for animal-food research.   All of this put a big smile on my face.  It is comforting that big companies and big cities can relax and engage in some good-natured tomfoolery, if only on April Fool’s Day!