Slashdot Mirror
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. "
I'll wait for google guys response, to have the complete laugh. Meanwhile, i'll keep looking for the fish store...
//WR
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.
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.
Forget about the pranks; it's the new Maps APIs that deserve attention. Not only can you create JavaScript/Ajax maps like with the Google API, but you can also embed Flash maps in your pages or even your own Flash applications. And there's a free geocoder.
Rasmus Lerdorf has a handy tutorial on using this stuff with PHP.
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."
Knowing that people munge the maps makes me feel not so bad. The other day I looked at a map of my house and in the description it said "Loserville. Population: You."