Google Nest announced four new products with a splashy landing page Wednesday -- except all were... [+]
A drone above every family and a posthumous social media profile after every death.
That's the promise made on a snappy landing page for four new
The products -- Google Trust (data "insurance"), Google Bee (personal drones), Google Hug (location-based crowdsourced hug matching) and Google Bye (an online profile for the afterlife) -- are a parody, albeit an eerie one where "it's completely free -- you pay with your data," the site said. Google acquired smart-thermostat maker Nest in January for $3 billion and has been rumored to be developing a hardware line with the Nest team.
Google Nest's four new products were also touted onstage Wednesday at the Re:publica conference in Berlin, a real conference whose organizers decided to have a little fun and host the parody bit. And with a little nudging -- especially from some audience members willing to be in on the joke -- German media almost took the bait.
The Peng Collective takes the stage at Berlin's Re:publica conference Wednesday. (Ruben... [+]
Months ago, Berlin-based activist group Peng Collective was turned down when it first applied to speak at the conference as representatives of Google, said Jean Peters, a 30-year-old collective member. But when members came clean to the conference and said they wanted to do a parody speech, the conference gave them a green light -- and the main stage.
So Peters and another member, Faith Bosworth, under the guise of fake names and Stanford University credentials, introduced the four products, complete with a drone appearance and a celebrity planted in the audience volunteering to get a hug. Then they lifted the veil.
"We told the audience to stop taking photos or video for a moment and explained that we were performing an act," Peters said. "We said, 'It's a hoax, and now we want you to help us make it an open-source hoax.'"
They asked audience members to tweet about it as if it were real for the next few hours after the event. The collective had also enlisted several political parties and NGOs to put out false press releases earlier in the day condemning the privacy implications of the new products. German Google spokespeople denied involvement with the presentation, but the buzz had already grown.
"A lot of people started tweeting like what we said was true, and quite a few media started believing it," Peters said.
Peters said the parody was fun while people bought it, but the overall point was to emphasize Google's privacy policies, which he calls hypocritical.
"We try to tackle all those companies who use the power in the world not for good but for not-good," he said of the group, which targeted Shell Oil in December. "If someone has so much influence, like Spider-Man, it comes with responsibility, and obviously these people do not act responsibly."
And for those curious about the designer of the site -- which mimicked Google's design down to small details like the Drive-like logo and the bottom-right-hand corner color bar -- he's German graphic designer Hannes Böttger.
A video of the presentation is below:
