Sat

Nov 5
2005

Nat Torkington

Nat Torkington

Yahoo! Maps Pranks Google

According to Silicon Valley Sleuth, Yahoo!'s new maps service (which I covered here) had a bogus local business listing for Google: "The Dude's Fish Store". The Sleuth's web site has a screen shot, but I found more proof (and more irony) by Googling for "The Dude's Fish Store"--it showed up in Yahoo! Local's list of "Toys in Mountain View" (View image). It's gone now, but I love that Google's own index preserved the prank against them.


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Comments: 4

  Marc [11.05.05 07:50 AM]

This is hilarious.....

  naser [11.05.05 09:06 PM]

hmmm...i think its unetical to undermine your oppnents like that. Google might be .5 billion $ short in revenue to Yahoo, but its growing like the blob. If the hydrogen core of google is not depleted, it will one day consume all that we know.

  Nick Lothian [11.07.05 09:46 PM]

I think it's a little sneakier than that. To quote Google's Matt Cutts:

"Has some Googler been running a side business out of their cubicle, or maybe just seeing what data sources get mapped?"

(From http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-yahoo-strangeness/)

  Ken [11.07.05 10:04 PM]

Actually, I'm not convinced this is a prank. It appears that somebody set up a Yahoo! Store with that name and Google's address. Perhaps it was a Google employee. In any case, it's not surprising that maps would incorporate the Y! Store database as an address data source.

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