At the turn of the century, the world's leading companies discovered this newfangled thing called the internet. Ever since, there has been an endless procession of PR stunts masquerading as April Fools' gags come April 1. As annual traditions go, it's somewhere between ostentatious Christmas lights and Talk Like A Pirate Day on the annoyance scale.

Most of their output is pretty groan worthy - but among the lame jokes and cynical hard sells are a few genuinely inspired creations. Some perfectly skate the line between ludicrous and plausible while others are just plain funny. Here are the best fake ads and products of 2018 so far.

The first day of April is always a difficult 24 hours to navigate if you want to avoid being tripped up by some zany product or service announcement from the likes of Google, Microsoft or, as we've seen today, Uncle Tobys and James Squire. To help you stay ahead of the game, we've selected the delicious (and not-so-delicious) fake stuff and put it all in the one place.

Dear Lifehacker, Last week, Microsoft's "teen girl" chatbot Tay transformed into a racist, sexist and creepily horny Holocaust denier in its first day of existence. Meanwhile, great thinkers like Elon Musk are freaking out about the dangers of machine learning. Should we be worried about the ways robots and AI software are learning to "think"?

Every year, April Fools' Day is marked not only by pranks played on colleagues and friends, but by false news stories and product announcements. We've rounded up 2016's best (and worst) April Fools' gags, including AirTasker's new platform for dogs, Contiki's virtual reality tours and the triumphant minting of the Dollarydoo.

Happy April Fool's Day! If you're stuck in an office all day and don't have time to organise any elaborate pranks to play on your colleagues, don't fret. You can get into the spirit of the occasion and unleash your inner prankster with these simple IT tricks that you can use on unsuspecting co-workers.

Every year, April Fools' Day is marked not only by pranks played on colleagues and friends, but by false news stories and product announcements. We've rounded up 2015's April Fools' malarkey, including a full gallery of celebrities shopping with Kogan (hi Kanye!), videos galore and the ones that turned out to be true -- yes, you really can play Pac-Man on Google Maps.

Tomorrow is April Fools' Day, and what better way to celebrate than by messing with the computers of colleagues, friends and family members? We've rounded up some of the all-time classics ready for April 1.

Every year, tech companies unveil new April Fools' Day fake announcements. Some are impressively comprehensive; some are frankly painful. From IPv5 to the Gmail Shelfie, from "Match Of The Day" to iiNet's 'Pet-Fi' and the inevitable Kogan moment, here are the most notable April Fools' Day tech prank spoilers of 2014.

Tomorrow is April Fools' Day. Mark the occasion with these simple tricks that will leave your colleagues confused. This is your chance for revenge from a year of idiotic support questions -- make the most of it.

Logan has rounded up the best tech-related April Fools' pranks over at Gizmodo. One we particularly wanted to highlight was BinaryScript, which "rebuilds the impenatrable wall of complexity relied on by computing professionals the world over" by converting your code into binary.

April Fools' Day is officially over in Australia, but we're still seeing fake news stories and new product announcements trickling in from the US. Here's a catch-up on the main tech-related pranks that did the rounds.

Tomorrow's April Fools' Day, the one day a year that regularly upstanding publications push all sorts of nonsense and pranks are the rule of the day. Aside from offering this as a helpful reminder to take the crazy/exciting/incredible news you hear across the internet tomorrow with a grain of salt, we'd also like to remind you, if you're the pranking sort, to check out these 10 harmless and awesome geek pranks. Be good, now!

It's April Fools' Day, which means we should all brace ourselves for the inevitable, widespread prankage. If you haven't prepared your own pranks, we've already got ten ready-to-go geek pranks for your perusal.

Wondering why every single link from YouTube's front page is going to *sigh* that Rick Astley video? It's April Fools', of course, and Google is all up on it. Here's a handy guide to what's real and what's not today in the Google-verse.