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Yahoo Map Engineers Prank Google

Posted by Zonk on from the show-offs dept.

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. "

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. So the way it looked to me by AEton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I read this in somebody's blog about twelve hours ago, it seemed like this was actually a moderately elaborate prank on Yahoo (there was a website attached to the fictional company at Google address, etc.). It seemed more like somebody had created this fake Website to see whose auto-mapping services would put that fake company at this address.

    But maybe I just didn't look very carefully and I'm an idiot?

    --
    We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
    1. Re:So the way it looked to me by darkmeridian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So what happened was that some guy created "The Dude's Fishstore" at Yahoo with Google's address. See?/A? He was waiting to see whether any mapping service would say that Google was a fishstore. Yahoo bought it hook, line, and sinker. So it wasn't Yahoo playing a prank on Google, it was Yahoo being inadequate and making boo-boo.

      --
      A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
  2. Amphitheater parkway is a dump. by tabbser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I worked there are year ago, across the road from google and it's a total dump. One of the reasons I left : Too many ants all over the place.
    Yahoo's place in Sunnyvale used to be nice, not been there for a while though.

    The only useful thing Google really does is the valet parking for employees, otherwise, the stock is over priced.
    I wonder if 4 years from now we'll be referring to a 'google bubble' ?

    Yeah, yeah, there goes my positive karma.

  3. Refreshing to see.... by talipdx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... some comedy between rival companies and not flames like Sun vs. Dell I enjoy the busting each others balls in good fun...... but the whole putting them in a vice. Brings back eerie memories of my last girlfriend.

  4. Re:Yahoo Engineers or Yahooligans? by Paska · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bingo, check out this Google Cache link - seems to have been data mined by the Yahoo and presented on their maps.

    http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:Jdv3LRqIRboJ:lo cal.yahoo.com/CA/Mountain%2BView/95763967/Retail%2 BShopping/8120444/Toys/index.html+%22The+Dude's+Fi sh+Store%22&hl=en
    Scroll down to item number 6.

  5. Re:Maps?! How novel! by tommers · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While I'm not going to even bother with the "Google did something, so why why does anyone bother" stuff, another reason that you should be glad Yahoo is in the maps/local space is that it might finally give Google Local a kick in the pants to become useful. Google Maps is by far the best maps product out there, but compared to Yahoo Local, their Local product is really anemic. There are some man features on Yahoo Local that I couldn't imagine being without and the fact that I still can't even sort by distance on Google Local seems silly. Maybe Google should just leave the "local thing alone".