• 1. InfoWorld claims Microsoft bought Yahoo. The respected tech trade's article is so straight-faced and credible that other journos weigh in seriously on the deal.
• 2. CollegeHumor.com serves up a single parody MySpace page. Way to take a vacation today, lusers.
• 3. CNET publishes the Urlrurl hoax we refused to run, plus a hoax about Intellipedia wars. What else should we not believe on CNET today?
• 4. Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton announces the sale of neo-feminist site Jezebel to Conde Nast, and Jezebel introduces new rich-brat editors from the midtown Manhattan world its readers loathe. Can't you just feel Big Nick's love for his female readers?
• 5. Larry Brin and Sergey Page call for 30-second YouTube auditions from people who want to settle the planet Mars as part of a Google/Virgin project. Instead of producing slick hoax videos, why don't you guys go build some real rockets?

Silicon Valley gossip site to become part of Yahoo!'s starting point strategy.

Yahoo! today announced it will make an unsolicited takeover bid to purchase Valleywag, the Silicon Valley technology gossip site, as part of a push to increase "starting points" for consumers.

"Though I, personally, haven't always seen eye to eye with its editors," said Blake Jorgensen, CFO of Yahoo!, in a message to employees," we are well aware of how many people start their online experience with Valleywag and hope that as part of the Yahoo! family, we can all just get a long."

Often called "Yahoowag" for its constant coverage of Yahoo! gossip, no matter how minor or incorrect, the pairing of the two is expected to be immediately accretive to Yahoo!'s earnings - especially when considering Valleywag's daily readership that some estimate in the "hundreds."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. No reaction to the offer has been heard from Valleywag editors who, for once, have been strangely silent.

By sheer noncoincidence, Westheimer will be pitching his startup at a tech meetup in New York tonight. We wonder who's the sucker here — hapless Web readers, or the reporters who lined up to trick them and boost Westheimer's profile for the day? We suggest you check how dutifully each participant repeats Westheimer's list of "talking points" in his email below. Then ask yourself how this differs from the way they cover startups on any other day of the year.

Two years later, Sun's tinkerers converted the CEO's space into a golf course, complete with a sand trap and a peeing angel fountain.

In 1991, alpha-alpha geek Wayne Rosing found his office moved into a tank at San Francisco's Steinhart Aquarium. Hundreds of salmon and a couple of sharks swam among the desktop photos of Wayne's wife and kids.

But instead of blooming into something bigger and better, April Fools' Day in tech has devolved over the past two decades into lazy online hoaxes. The real-world craftwork of Schmidt's underlings — think about how much time they had to spend away from their keyboards to set up that shark tank — has been replaced by insta-Web product brochures and fake news stories.

Worse, the goal is no longer in-house camaraderie, but Internet publicity. Some companies notify the press of their hoaxes a week early, in hopes of securing coverage. We thought about running their emails as they came in, just to pop their bubbles. But there's no laugh in giving away an unfunny joke. Look, if you want attention, why not ship a real product? That seems easier.