As Nichiren mentioned in his last blog post, the puppy is an April Fools weekend feature and not, as I suggested and believed, some kind of key logging, spying virus.

By the way, to everyone that I freaked out with that, I apologise.  I guess my overthinking wasn't such a good thing after all.

But people are still seeing it now and wondering what the hell it is and whether anyone else can see it.  To answer that question, yes, we can.  So for the benefit of you people who aren't aware, I will explain to you what it is and give a plausible argument as to why they've done it.  And it will be based on what we know rather than suspicion and ... basically wrongness.

The tech industry is known for creating features for April Fools day.  (Yes, I know that it is April 1st and for some people, today is April 3rd.  Bear with me.)  These features are often little gimmicks that look neat.  Sometimes, they are fake products.  Sometimes, they are real products that go on to last for many years.

Let's give examples of these from arguably the most prolific of April Fool joke players in the tech industry, Google.

Features that are little gimmicks

Back in 2015, Google made an addition to Google Maps that allowed you to play Pacman on the streets of your city.  That feature lasted for a few days after April Fools Day and lost a lot of my time.  And then the idiots removed it.

This year, they added a thing to Gmail called "Mic Drop" which, when clicked, would allow add a GIF to an email of a minion "dropping the mic" and would mute the conversation so you were not alerted to any new replies.  It sparked a huge backlash and Google were forced to remove the feature prematurely.

Fake products

In 2000, one of the first Google "products" to be released was MentalPlex, which harnessed the power of your mind to search.  Of course it was real, I mean, what computer in 2000 couldn't read ones mind?  In fact, none of the results given were actual results but were error messages.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_April_Fools%27_Day_hoaxes#2000  I am not sure which error message I love the most.  By the way, read that page for the many other April Fools hoaxes that they created.

This year, Google Australia launched a product called Searchable Socks, which could be found when using the Google app.  When the beacon was pressed, it played this:

Google Netherlands also announced the self driving bike.

Real product launches

Did you know that, on April 1st 2004, Google launched Gmail?  Yep.  Gmail was an April Fools product, but was a genuine product.  The reason it was considered to be a hoax was because Google offered 1GB of space, which at the time was huge.  It was also launched in the same unserious language that we thought made it a joke.  Nope, it was serious.  The following year, they doubled the space to 2GB.

This year, Google launched the ability for you to search through your Google Photos by emoji.  Apparently, this is a genuine feature, but since I don't use Google Photos, I can only go off what Wikipedia is telling me.

As a result, some tech companies jump onto the April Fools bandwaggon and launch a thing that is in the spirit of the day.  And that's what the puppy is.

If you use your arrow keys, or you use the W, A, S and D keys, you can move the puppy around the page.  Which is annoying when you're typing, but fun I guess when you're not.

However, with it being an April Fools thing, it will be removed "tomorrow".  Basically, given time zones, I would imagine that you won't see it past Monday, so I'd use that as your guideline for timing.  Either way, enjoy the little critter, or get infuriated by it.  Your choice.  Just remember, it's not a password stealing or message spying thing that I might have said it was ... and I'm still sorry for that ...