May be I have a short memory, but it seems like this April Fool’s Day we had an unusually high number of pranks, fake news, and hackings.

Google had quite a few of them, Google Paper — free supported by “red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica” and Google TiSP, free wireless broadband service that is installed by flushing a cord down your toilet.

For many April Fools day is just a time for gags. For marketers and publishers, however, hoax marketing is becoming an increasingly attractive way of pulling in backlinks. Last April, Quadzilla said “Hoax Marketing is one logical evolotionary growth path that will prove to be extremely profitable.”

I’m not going to name any specifics, but I know of hoax marketing projects which turned out to be extremely profitable. Combined with SEO value Google has played a major role in creating the perfect breeding ground hoaxes online.

So where is the ethical line? A blatantly obvious cynical satire to one person can be a true and urgent story to another (more than a few newspapers have reported stories from The Onion as true.) In this case, the jokes on the reporter who fell for the story. What about stories that don’t come from comedy web sites and are not published on April 1st?

To me a documentary on the latest September 11th conspiracy theory is a mockery of all the people who believe it. To others, it is a chilling truth.