Although they are facing a $1 billion lawsuit from entertainment firm Viacom, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin took some time out to have a laugh at web browsers' expense on April Fool's day.
The pair indulged in some techie high jinks by creating a web pagethat offered "a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access" through users' home sewage pipelines.
Named the Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP), the system facetiously claimed to be compatible with Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system and insisted it had ten times the flow rate of the average DSL line.
The search engine giant even created a step-by-step guide of how to install the latrinal system and wrote a 'Frequently Asked Questions' section to convince people that the prank was for real.
Crucially, the site exhibited some exquisite internal linking in order to make it more believable and has since become the talk of many a blogging site.
There are also lessons to be learnt by businesses: a major part of Google's brand image is its "don't be evil" mantra, which incorporates a keen sense of fun. Such joviality often goes down well with internet users and allows firms' often icy perceptions to thaw.
