[13thLetter]

If the stories of people missing out on job offers and so forth are true, Google did real damage to their lives and should make amends somehow.

I'll freely grant that I don't know what, specifically, they should do, but "sorry lol" doesn't really cut it.

[arghimonmobile]

If I were one of those duped users, I'd expect a service subscription refund from Google. Or maybe a few months' service on the house. At least.

/s

[13thLetter]

Well, that's the interesting question, isn't it.

Google offered a high quality service for free. (Well, "free" as in they're selling eyeballs to advertisers, but, you know. Internet free.) They aggressively promoted it to the entire world. Literally a billion people took them up on it and, after years of reliable service, have made it a central part of their professional and personal lives.

What is Google's responsibility at this point to not grief those billion people? Whether by bad April Fool's pranks, or anything else?

If the takeaway from your comment is that the world would be better if people paid for their email service, I wouldn't disagree. But how we get back to that point is not at all clear.