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Yahoo Map Engineers Prank Google
pete314 writes "Yahoo engineers apparently couldn't help themselves, and Yahoo Maps had a great prank on the folks at Google. The beta of the new Yahoo Maps for a short while listed 'The Dude's Fish Store' at 1600 Amphiteatre Parkway in Mountain View, CA. The address is better known as the headquarters for Yahoo's competitor Google." From the post: "The phone number listed is for guy named Ruben Suterwitz (or that's what it sounds like on his voicemail). His voicemail gives the option to get assistance, forwarding callers to the Google front desk. There are several hints pointing to a Google prank. The search engine's co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia and both he and his buddy Larry Page were students at Stanford when they founded the company. "
What are the chances that Yahoo engineers did this vs. the chances some third party setup a yahoo.biz website for "The Dude's Fish Store" and Yahoo! Maps indexed it and added it to their mapping system? I vote for the third party candidate.
Seems to me its easy for anyone to setup a site with Yahoo and it would be easy for Yahoo to use data already in their systems to make their map more complete or even just as a starting point for adding data to the new system. Unless its part of Google's unique business strategy, I doubt their website is hosted by Yahoo and as easily added to the dataset.
Great...more "flash goodnes" everywhere...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Where else in Yahoo's new map service are there hidden pranks (a.k.a., bad information) that only the Yahoo insiders know about?
why don't they just leave the maps thing alone - the market is saturated
Yeah, because now they'll just keep competing with each other, each trying to outdo the rest, In the end, the only people who'll benefit from that situation will be the bloody users.
That would suck, wouldn't it?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
This might not be a prank.
0 829ta_talk_alford
About 2 weeks ago, news stories were circulating regarding how dictionaries and encyclopedias deliberately insert false entries into their compendiums. They do this to catch obvious theft of their information.
There remains the possibility that GOOGLE themselves or another company that keeps map data has inserted their own false information.
Here's a refresher article on the false entries in dictionaries/encyclopedias: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/05
When microsoft just airbrushed apple off of their satellite maps it may have been an attempt to be funny but it was basically petty.
If yahoo had done this to Google's own maps on the Google site that would have been vandalism not necesarily a prank.
That they went to the trouble of putting up a fake voicemail and other humourous details puts it in the realm of a prank rather than a childish tantrum. Whether you find it funny, that's up to you. There's a thin line between humour and malice, but basically humour is important because it is a legitimate way to air a grievence in a relatively socially acceptable manner.
I don't think this totally undermines Yahoo's credibility. If you needed to get to the Google campus you still could. If you were looking for the Google number, you'd probably Google it anyways.
If anything it actually gives them credibility because it brings them back to the roots of what Yahoo! and the early net was about when it was built in the dorms -- fun.