Don't Just Join a Startup; Start Up a New Chapter for Man.

Last year Google turned your love life into an algorithmically solvable search problem. This year it's teamed up with Virgin to give us Virgle: the adventure of not one, but many lifetimes.

Apply to become a Virgle pioneer and you could win a coveted slot on a ship to Mars. It will be dangerous. It will be uncomfortable. It will be unnecessarily expensive. "But your enriched descendants will appreciate your sacrifice, which should render worthwhile your choice to spend the rest of your (perhaps radically foreshortened) life in deprivation and uncertainty," Virgle assures you.

If that's insufficient persuasion, watch Richard Branson, Larry Page and Sergey Brin waffle on about the new world. Well, mostly Richard and Sergey.

Save scoffs for tomorrow. Google released Gmail on April Fool's Day, and it's changed the way we email. Think about that.