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. "

Where the..??

[Kuku_monroe]

I'll wait for google guys response, to have the complete laugh. Meanwhile, i'll keep looking for the fish store...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Where the..??

[Kuku_monroe]

Not the one i was looking for but it seems they have better fish than their competitors. And i cite the web: "We have better fish than our competitors"

Re:Where the..??

[Haydn Fenton]

Heh. I'm surprised to see it but glad there's some friendly joking going on from Yahoo towards Google.

Also from the website (about section): "We've been around forever and will never get out of business.", "We have all kinds of fish.", "Our fish NEVER die!" (Ballmer related?).

Re:Where the..??

[galaad2]

if you view the header image alone you'll find its got a huge resolution of 1498 x 925 pixels

http://ca.local.yahoo.biz/thedudesfishstore/cheese s300.jpg [yahoo.biz]

now i know what i'll use as wallpaper for the next week :D

*mmm yummy*

Re:Where the..??

[Tatarize]

I think Google started it. Didn't Google replace Yahoo's HQ with an empty lot? Or was that Microsoft.

Re:Where the..??

[nostrad]

That was Microsoft erasing Apple HQ
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/25/ 1856220&tid=133&tid=109&tid=1&tid=3 [slashdot.org]

Re:Where the..??

[ecko3437]

They didn't erase it, the photos are just from before the Cupertino campus was built. Note the dirt and whatnot.

Re:Where the..??

[NetFusion]

I think this image was doctored by Steve Ballmer so he could say...

"Apple? I fucking buried them too!"

*throws chair

Re:Where the..??

[Pollardito]

i'm hoping for some sort of response that generates *any* laugh. it's strange that so much effort on Yahoo's part couldn't generate any bit of humor, but maybe it's funnier if you can see the whole picture and not just what that article uncovered.

Re:Where the..??

[dantheman82]

My favorite line from the Yahoos:
From the Dude's Fish Store [yahoo.biz]:
What we offer - We have better fish than our competitors.

Pretty cool :)

What I want to know is

[FidelCatsro]

Why didn't they replace it with a shop that sells glasses ,Grants Goggles or some such.
Would have made a bit more sense.

Other than that it just seems a bit mean really.

Innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool! With Google, MSN and Yahoo I can have maps on three different computers now!

(...continues reading his buzzword magazin...)

Yahoo Engineers or Yahooligans?

[Apu]

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.

Re:Yahoo Engineers or Yahooligans?

[Paska]

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 [66.102.7.104]
Scroll down to item number 6.

Re:Yahoo Engineers or Yahooligans?

[hattmoward]

How was this much of a prank anyway? More like they pranked searchers, not Google.

Re:Yahoo Engineers or Yahooligans?

[WormholeFiend]

and it's not that funny of a prank either.

more like a "ha ha, groan" than a "ROFLCOPTER"

Re:Yahoo Engineers or Yahooligans?

[ari_j]

However, it would be funny if Google was responsible for setting it up. ;)

So the way it looked to me

[AEton]

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?

Re:So the way it looked to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an idiot?

do you post on /. ?

That can't be it

[the_mighty_$]

I don't think that is it because the contact info on the fish site [yahoo.biz] doesnt list the Google address. It lists another address (where no business is located). If Yahoo had used the data provided by the fish site, as you are suggesting, then it would have placed the business at 1600 Middlefield Rd, Mountain View, CA, no?

IMHO, TFA is correct, this is a prank by a Yahoo employee.

Re:So the way it looked to me

[darkmeridian]

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. [66.102.7.104]

It's the API, Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget about the pranks; it's the new Maps APIs [yahoo.net] that deserve attention. Not only can you create JavaScript/Ajax [yahoo.net] maps like with the Google API, but you can also embed Flash maps in your pages [yahoo.net] or even your own Flash applications [yahoo.net]. And there's a free geocoder [yahoo.net].

Rasmus Lerdorf has a handy tutorial [lerdorf.com] on using this stuff with PHP.

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[sznupi]

Great...more "flash goodnes" everywhere...

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[thelost]

i'm sure it's already been said but i will reiterate on my own behalf, not everyone hates flash.

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[sznupi]

It's a pragmatic thing mostly. I often find myself using very low end computers with 128/96/sometimes 64 mb of ram (cafe, uni, such stuff). You learn to hate Flash in such cases, especially since on part of these machines you are unable to use any flash blocking.

Oh, and also aesthetic part of it, a bit. More often than not, things made in Flash look...flashy, but pathetic.

FVM2

[ScottyH]

Just thought I'd mention that the new Flash virtual machine coming out in a few months time is about 5-10X faster by Macromedia's claims, and these claims have been backed up by users of the public alpha (myself included). The days of Flash killing your CPU cycles may soon be history.

Re:FVM2

[sznupi]

Great news.

OTOH things might make problems with "aesthetic" part more visible... ("uhhh...now I could do whole page in flashy Flash, full of effects and it'll be still fast). Yeah, I guess I think in this case that everything that could go bad - will.

Re:FVM2

[ScottyH]

Flash is just a tool. You'll find that anyone building a serious application will not design anything "Flashy" in Flash. These applications are the ones you're most likely to *have* to use (and maybe even want to use?).

The other, effects-laden pages are not important and thus easily ignored.

I know hating Flash is the popular opinion to have right now but developers are working hard to make it better. Open-source frameworks are becoming more popular (including the application framework based on Cocoa to

Re:FVM2

[sznupi]

As I've said, nothing against the technology itself (unless I'm on something low-specs), just the way it is (ab)used, from the point of consumer, which I will remain BTW...

Re:FVM2

[Mr Z]

Well, Flash hasn't killed my machine in a very long time. Something about them not making an AMD64 plugin for Linux.

Re:FVM2

[mad.frog]

In fact, you can try it out yourself: a public alpha of the player with the new VM, along with an alpha of the new Eclipse-based authoring tool ("Flex 2.0"), is available *free* (as in beer, not in speech) at http://labs.macromedia.com/ [macromedia.com] ...

There's more than just a new VM; it also provides an ECMAScript-4 compliant language ("ActionScript 3" in Macromedia-speak), which seems *much* more suitable for real coding work.

(Disclaimer: I work for Macromedia, so I'm not unbiased, but even so, it's pretty cool :-)

Re:FVM2

[FuzzieNorn]

Oh, please, there's not even an OS X download which doesn't need Windows to extract it, never mind a Linux/x86 download. Heck, there's no Linux/x86 build of Flash Player 8 yet. Presumably they've just decided to desert the Linux platform, so I can't imagine you're going to get a lot of support on slashdot.

I'm personally stuck on linux/ppc right now, and that means that Flash crap is completely fucking useless to me. If Real can manage to provide an up-to-date linux/ppc version, why can't Macromedia release

Re:FVM2

[mad.frog]

Um... did you notice the word "alpha"? As in, "not even beta yet"?

No, there's no OS X or Linux version yet. The alpha is Windows-only. OS X version is definitely planned, just not ready yet. I don't know what we've announced regarding Linux plans, so I can't comment on that.

Also true that there's no Linux version of Player 8 yet. But as one of the engineers on that team said, they're looking for experienced Linux engineers to help finish the port [kaourantin.net].

Re:FVM2

[mad.frog]

Oh, please, there's not even an OS X download which doesn't need Windows to extract it

FYI, this isn't supported by MACR, but there are instructions on how to use the framework (if not the IDE) on OS X here:

http://robbevan.com/blog/2005/10/23/working-with-f lex-2-on-mac-os-x/ [robbevan.com]

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

True. Not everyone is smart, either. Usually the two circles of idiots and flash-lovers overlap IMO.

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[oztiks]

I recommend you guys actually view src and see that there isnt any flash on the site, it uses ajax style programming and generates the map as images ...

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[sznupi]

"You guys"? Tell that to parent poster...

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[Baricom]

The new beta supports both a Flash and AJAX architecture. You can visit http://beta.maps.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] to see the Flash version in action.

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[oztiks]

I can see this being a very powerful tool for the tourism trade (or any service that maps are useful) in the states and canada.

It hasnt got the wowness of google earth with the satillite outlook and the zooming functionality but it makes up for it definatly in functionality, too bad it doesnt map my country (australia).

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[danharan]

Their JS API actually has fewer features than Google's- no native polyline support, e.g. Oh, and no cool sat view. A geocoder IS nice though.

The more competition the better. We all win in the end.

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[bigman2003]

I have tried to use both Yahoo! and Google search APIs.

Yahoo! was a piece of cake...straightforward, and I was getting accurate results after about 5 minutes of work.

I tried to figure out Google, but I couldn't. Call me stupid...that's okay. But I just could not get through the entire process successfully. In fact, that is why I went on to use Yahoo!

So to me Yahoo! is a godsend. Just their ease of use elevated them from "why the hell wouldn't I use Google" to, "Wow, it looks like Yahoo! is back in busin

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[superpulpsicle]

I used google maps and earth, and never looked back. The satellite view is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I can finally look at the surrounding and get an idea what the place really looks like. Yahoo need to fill that void.

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[sznupi]

Just look at their mainpage. They're old style "webportal", with goal to center its users around them wholly...

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[Quixote]

Right on, AC!

It's funny how Google releases a new version of a toolbar and Slashdot covers it immediately; but Yahoo releases a new API with lots of good stuff and nary a peep at Slashdot Central...

The new API looks awesome. Rasmus has a demo page [lerdorf.com] which shows how you can mash data from different sources onto a very slick map.

Re:It's the API, Stupid

[Ilgaz]

Yahoo Toolbar invented all that toolbar business and I remember adding bookmarks dynamically to my Yahoo bookmarks in Netscape 4.78 (yes it's that old!)

Yahoo toolbar does _not_ interfere with the sites you visit (e.g. not "spyware") too.

I wonder after Opera decision to make browser free with support of making Google default search engine... Google pays to media to make every single re-invention of them news? Such conspiracy theories started to come my mind since I am kind of sick about every single browser

Maps?! How novel!

[madaxe42]

Seriously - why don't they just leave the maps thing alone - the market is saturated - we have, what, google maps, microsoft maps (or whatever they call it), mapquest, map24, mapit, streetmap, maporama, and the list goes on. If they're not bringing *anything* innovative or new to the table, what the £"$£ is the point?!

Re:Maps?! How novel!

[ozmanjusri]

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?

Re:Maps?! How novel!

[hankwang]

In the end, the only people who'll benefit from that situation will be the bloody users.

I surely hope so. Over here in Netherlands the available online maps are horrible compared to both MS's and Google's. If they would just extend their databases to the rest of the world...

Re:Maps?! How novel!

[hugzz]

I'd prefer them to put their efforts towards innovating in new fields than trying to follow google's every step poorly

Re:Maps?! How novel!

[kesuki]

yahoo has been in the maps game longer than google. multipoint directions is cool, now if only you didn't need to download a windows program to get that kind of multi point functionality...

Re:Maps?! How novel!

[LaughingCoder]

And while we're on the subject, what's with all those Linux distros. We have Redhat, Ubuntu, Suse, Debian, Knoppix, etc etc. Enough already.

Re:Maps?! How novel!

[tommers]

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 dist

Maps?

[Mr Z]

These wacky CS people and their abstract names for things. Why can't they be like perl and call them hashes?

Re:Maps?! How novel!

[deimtee]

yes, very handy for us travelling salesmen....

Amphitheater parkway is a dump.

[tabbser]

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.

Re:Amphitheater parkway is a dump.

[JNighthawk]

"Yeah, yeah, there goes my positive karma."

And quotes like these are a one-way ticket to positive karma.

Re:Amphitheater parkway is a dump.

[MrMista_B]

:Yeah, yeah, there goes my positive karma.

Heh, well, till you said that, anyway - now you're guarunteed at least a 3 or 4 Informative or Insightful.

You'd think they could afford a special panther

[artifex2004]

One of the reasons I left : Too many ants all over the place.

You'd think they could afford a special panther, to take care of the problem.
You know, one that comes with its own soundtrack. Bright pink?

Dead ants! Dead ants! Dead ants dead ants dead ants, dead ants Dead ANNNTS...

Re:You'd think they could afford a special panther

[NeoSkandranon]

You'd think they could afford a special panther...

I'm glad Im not drinking coffee this morning. Call me easily amused but that madem e giggle like a small child

Re:You'd think they could afford a special panther

[ClamIAm]

Damn you! Now I'll never get that song out of my head...

Re:Amphitheater parkway is a dump.

[AndroidCat]

They should try bees. They're great at exploring, and when they return, they can do a little dance to tell all the other bees about the great pr0n site they found.

Refreshing to see....

[talipdx]

... some comedy between rival companies and not flames like Sun vs. Dell [slashdot.org] 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.

Har de har

[Fusen]

I just want to say, this prank is hilarious -.-

And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[QuietLagoon]

Where else in Yahoo's new map service are there hidden pranks (a.k.a., bad information) that only the Yahoo insiders know about?

Re:And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! I went to 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway for some quality fish, and all I found was Google.

Great.

Re:And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[crayz]

Wow, lighten up

Re:And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[AndroidCat]

It's not always hidden pranks. Sometimes map makers put fake details in to catch copyright violations when someone uses their data for their own maps.

It must be loads of fun for people actually looking for one of the fake details. ("No--look, onna map! She show China just a leetle bit further!" "Sure Christopher, whatever.")

Re:And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[QuietLagoon]

It's not always hidden pranks. Sometimes map makers put fake details in to catch copyright violations when someone uses their data for their own maps.

Yippers. Those details are usually in obscure parts of the maps, like a fake street at the end of an isolated dead-end road.

The intentional bad information on Yahoo's map goes beyond that, in the name of tweaking a competitor. I wonder what else Yahoo plans to do to play a prank on google, and how will that subsequent bad information affect my usage of

Re:And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[Joehonkie]

I'm really sure this has had an extremely detrimental impact on your life.

Re:And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[QuietLagoon]

It has. I can't sleep at night, my dog died, and my car got two flats when I was on the other side of town. :-)

I'd still rather the Yahoo engineers concentrate on making their servers exhibit at least a modicum of reliability.

Re:And this makes me trust Yahoo's map how?

[jrockway]

> I'd still rather the Yahoo engineers concentrate on making their servers exhibit at least a modicum of reliability.

Then don't buy their stock. You didn't? Then shut up, what do you care?

This doesn't make me feel so bad...

[Jack Earl]

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."

Blast them!

[SamSim]

I drove all the way up there hoping to buy some fish!

I still prefer google maps

[Barkley44]

I think their interface is just much simplier. And like madaxe42 says above, there are already a ton of map services.

Re:I still prefer google maps

[duffahtolla]

Yahoo's new data source, seems to be the same as googles. 52nd should connect to 107th. [yahoo.com] Google has this same mistake.
What I really like is yahoo's traffic speed/accident overlay. Now thats nice!

Re:I still prefer google maps

[Barkley44]

What is their source for that live data?

I'm a minion of the googlopoly...

[kikensei]

as much as the next guy. But YYahoo's maps seem to be implemented better than Google. You can zoom in and out with the mouse whhel, and in Google, Maps w/ Firefox, I invariably, on multiple machines, get vacant squares, and I have to drag the map around this way and that to get the data filled in. Yahoo just works much more smoothly.

Re:I'm a minion of the googlopoly...

[Mr. Capris]

What you say may be true (read: i haven't checked myself), but from the handful of minutes i looked at Yahoo maps, i didn't see "satilite(or however you spell it) view"...Which i like bout google. *but* i did like the business thingys on the bottom...too bad they're prolly just ads

Google Responds...

[Ingolfke]

By buying Yahoo! and razing it to the ground.

This is why geeks cant get women..

[N3WBI3]

What a lame prank! now if they had tp's googles hq I would be impressed..

Why

[DMorritt]

so why link to http://www.stanford.edu/ [stanford.edu] and http://google.com/ [google.com] on the links page? and post a gmail account [or should it be googlemail.co.uk over here ...]

How is this a prank?

[smart.id]

How is this a prank? Since when is making your own service unrealiable in terms of the information it provides a "prank"? If I make fun of someone on a website, am I pranking them? A prank is when you make someone look like an idiot at THEIR expense, not the person doing the prank.

Because it's funny...

[woodsrunner]

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 hu

Re:Because it's funny...

[Rufus211]

> When microsoft just airbrushed apple off of their satellite maps it may have been an attempt to be funny but it was basically petty.

Sigh, they didn't airbrush apple off the map. The map was just a few years old, from before the current campus had been built. You could see the construction where it was being prepared for building in the field.

Let's consider another possibility

[shoolz]

This might not be a prank.

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/050 829ta_talk_alford [newyorker.com]

Maybe

[jacoplane]

They just like the fish and are suggesting people go there for lunch [techcrunch.com]...

the dudes website

[yohan1701]

Looks like the Dudes also have a website http://ca.local.yahoo.biz/thedudesfishstore [yahoo.biz]

Pranks on google maps

[inverselimit]

I think there are enoug MIT folks at Google that they felt it necessary to omit any mention of a certain other Cambridge, MA college, though there is a label for its former women's branch, Radcliffe College.

"Great" prank?

[MisterBad]

That's a pretty lame prank, actually.

Google vs. Yahoo

[sameerdesai]

Did you guys read at the end of TFA that the screenshots were taken from a Google Cache: Screenshots from Google for a story on Yahoo playing prank on Google.

That can also be seen as

Google: I have got your screen shots in my cache now, I will never forget it. Revenge will be mine
Yahoo: nyann nyann nyannn ...

Does anyone actually...

[Veilrap]

Does anyone actually use yahoo anymore? I mean seriously I only go to yahoo on accident. I couldn't even tell you what the front page looks like.

Re:Does anyone actually...

[Veilrap]

You do know I wasn't serious right?

Hire some better comedy writers

[Max Nugget]

Ok, so...pranks are great and all, but...it's important that they actually be FUNNY. "The Dude's Fish Store?" Oh yeah, that's real clever.

Bad Pranks

[Alsee]

"The Dude's Fish Store" at 1600 Amphiteatre Parkway in Mountain View, CA.

Speaking of bad pranks at 1600...
Did anyone else immediately think of Pennsylvania Avenue?

-

prank?

[rlbond86]

That's the worst prank I've ever seen. "OMG TaHTS NOT GOGGLE THTAS A FSIH SToRZ!!!!!!!1111!!!ONE!!"

Library or book store

[bp+m_i_k_e]

They should have made it a library or a book store, instead of a fish store.

Re:Too obscure.

[AndroidCat]

They were just trying to bait Google...

Re:Too obscure.

[Spacejock]

Pity Google didn't bite...

Re:Too obscure.

[roseblood]

maybe it just smelled fishy to them?