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"Whale Fail" - Google Books' Error Page
- aresant 16y agoDon't miss the original Fail Whale artist's page - http://www.yiyinglu.com/ http://www.yiyinglu.com/
- ronnoch 16y agoHumorous, sure, but I wonder what percentage of Google Books users will get the reference. If I didn't know about Twitter's fail whale, "Whale Fail" might seem totally random.
- ComputerGuru 16y agoThe rest will simply laugh at the Herman Melville reference.
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- StavrosK 16y agoFail Whale fail, "Whale Fail" fail.
- alanh 16y agoNo, it doesn’t make sense, even if you are familiar with Moby Dick. How is the whale failing? How is there any “fail” associated with the whale? The wording only makes sense if you are already familiar with the Fail Whale meme. Edit: Thanks for pointing out the color of the whale. That does make more sense. But still, I object to the unprofessional and derivative wording. Having any sort of whale on an error page is homage enough, without beating anyone over the head with it or confusing people. “We’re having trouble locating that <del>whale</del> <ins>book</ins>” would make more sense, IMO.
- hugh3 16y agoNote the colour of the whale and the dejected expression on Ahab's shoulders. "Not another fricking black whale", he's saying. "Whale fail!"
- catshirt 16y agofwiw, even the term "fail" alone is still pretty subcultural. i don't entirely agree with alanh, but they are definitely right that many of those who understand the reference are letting their understanding blind them. this type of blindness is rabidly (albeit understandably) common among technology companies in general. given that that Google reaches all types of users and an error page is meant to inform, i'm not sure the reference is worth the risk. that all said, i personally find the reference obvious, thus boring. but that's just my opinion. :)
- hugh3 16y agofwiw, even the term "fail" alone is still pretty subcultural. i don't entirely agree with alanh, but they are definitely right that many of those who understand the reference are letting their understanding blind them. Sure, but it's not necessary to fully understand the page in order to get the message. An error occurred. Why is there a whale involved? Who cares? The only people I can imagine who might get confused are people who encounter this while trying to read Moby Dick.
- catshirt 16y agoi never suggested the reference was detrimental to the page, but it is a risk. proven even just by the fact that it's debatable. it is an error page; the person likely got here because they are confused in the first place. this is especially notable given the huge spectrum of Google's audience. i don't feel strongly either way on the execution. however, i do feel strongly that it would be negligent for the deciding party to not at least recognize that it is a risk.
- Aleul 16y agoJust curious, what age groups to do associate with? Being 20, so around teens and what not 'fail' is said an obnoxious amount. I don't think it's as subcultural as you think. (Some of these people ask how to use Twitter...) Yes, it's an error page, and it says it is "having trouble finding the page". I don't get the confusion that could cause. If an obvious reference is boring, why did you complain about the use of fail which is subcultural as you put it?
- aikinai 16y agoJust to confirm with empirical evidence, I didn't know about the "fail whale" meme until after seeing this, but I still thought Google's page was humorous and made sense.
- hugh3 16y agoThe worst case scenario is that it makes no less sense than the original Twitter fail whale. That was a completely out-of-context picture which made no sense, but nobody complained about it. Likewise, anyone confronted with a google books fail whale (which, incidentally, should happen a lot less often than the twitter fail whale, because google's infrastructure doesn't suck) without the preceding context of the twitter fail whale will understand what the page means just as much as they'd understand "404 not found".
- sfphotoarts 16y agoYou'd have to have lived under a rock for a few years not to be familiar with the twitter fail whale.
- alanh 16y agoI strongly agree with this comment. Sure, all us nerds know the Fail Whale. And Twitter is sort-of mainstream, but has nowhere near the adoption of Facebook — and those mainstream users, even when seeing the fail whale, may not know it goes by that name. Now while I enjoy the artwork here, and it’s clever, this error page strikes me as 1. Overly nerd-centric / in-joke (Edit: I am referring to the Twitter reference, not the use of the word “fail” here) 2. Unprofessional (the word “fail” used as a noun) 3. Derivative.
- lukeschlather 16y ago1. This use of fail is becoming a fairly standard colloquialism. I don't think it's too hard for the average person to conclude Moby Dick from context, since they've probably heard someone under the age of 25 use fail in a similar manner. 2. Google is renowned and even loved for their "unprofessional" home page logos. This is no different, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of whimsy. 3. As is all art.
- alanh 16y agoRegarding item #2: The home page doodles are interesting and unconventional, but not unprofessional. This bastardization of English is not interesting, only unconventional in educated company, and certainly unprofessional.
- sdkmvx 16y ago"All nouns can be verbed, and all verbs can be nouned." (JARGON file). But seriously, this is how language evolves.
- wwortiz 16y agoWell it is much nicer than the google default http://www.google.com/blalgalgal http://www.google.com/blalgalgal
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- ek 16y agoIt rhymes.
- Semiapies 16y agoThough to such people it's just a nice little piece of art. No harm done.
- Amnon 16y agoTurns out the page is a reference to a certain Fail Whale -- http://www.whatisfailwhale.info/ http://www.whatisfailwhale.info/. The thing that's bothering me about the fail whale -- all the strings that hold the whale are curved. Is this physically possible? (Assuming the birds can hold the whale in the air). Shouldn't at least one of the strings be a straight line?
- hugh3 16y agoYes. I can only assume that they're not strings, they're hyperstrong super-thin curved rigid bars.
- mansr 16y agoIf the strings have any mass of their own, they will be curved.
- StavrosK 16y agoNot if their starting point is directly above their ending point and there's no wind...
- hugh3 16y agoTheir starting point obviously isn't above their ending point, though. mansr is right, I've been looking at this all wrong because I assumed the weight of the strings was small compared to the weight of the whale. But if the strings are dense they will curve under their own weight. So we're not looking at a super-light whale, we're looking a regular whale supported by super-heavy strings. (Where do you get strings so dense that the mass of a short stretch is comparable to the mass of a whale? Why, the same place you get those goddamn birds, of course.)
- StavrosK 16y ago"Turns out"? I'm sorry, isn't it obvious that the page is a cross between the Fail Whale and Moby Dick?
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- dgallagher 16y agoSuperNews! did an awesome parody of Twitter and their Fail Whale (4:28 long): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w
- avgarrison 16y agothat was four minutes and twenty eight seconds of pure enjoyment.
- protomyth 16y agoI wonder if someone will raise a fuss over the harpoon? It would actually not surprise me.
- run4yourlives 16y agoI hate to say it, but I think hackernews has officially jumped the shark. :-(
- paul 16y agoThis does seem like it's 1/2 step away from LOLCATS.
- joelackner 16y agohttp://www.hanover.edu/404 http://www.hanover.edu/404
- dschobel 16y agoYou have two options-- you can submit great stories or you can complain. Choose wisely.
- iuguy 16y agoSUBMIT STORIES You reach for the moust but it is still dark. You pick up something slightly squishy, it stings you, then eats you. You are dead, Your score: 6/31337. Would you like to play again? (Y/N)
- jrockway 16y agoJokes are OK, but not when they're not even a little amusing.
- davi 16y agoNo, there's a third choice. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777665 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777665 [edit: An idea which I wouldn't know about if I hadn't seen it here. For me, HN still is good enough to spend time with. But it has grown less stringent about humor and links to images, which I think reduces S/N.]
- kunley 16y agoNo. The solution is to allow downvoting the original submissions, not only the comments. I see really crappy submissions occasionally. I just don't want them to show and I'd like their authors to refine their submitting strategy, so I just want to downvote. And the argument that I can upvote other stories instead is flawed - it'd require me to be here all the time, which is an evil requirement.
- naithemilkman 16y agogoogle is so going to buy twitter.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoNo.
- jarin 16y agoIt's interesting that the whale is becoming the international symbol of "fail". I fully expect Greenpeace to get up in arms about it.
- alexqgb 16y ago"Please - don't fail the whales." [Insert photo of sad baby whale]
- duck 16y agoI've seen a 25' Baleen whale dead in a river up in Alaska and I can safety say that a dead whale is about as big of a fail as you will ever see. I might have missed the birds carrying it there, but when I saw it they were snacking on him.
- mikecane 16y agoI am more prone to seeing that damned "I'm Sorry..." but we think you're a bot or some dick sending automated queries and now we are killing your access for 24-72 hours.
- nopassrecover 16y agoUsually just asks me for a captcha
- mikecane 16y agoThere was actually something going on they have fixed: http://twitter.com/#!/lizthegrey/status/11944278339100672 http://twitter.com/#!/lizthegrey/status/11944278339100672 http://twitter.com/#!/lizthegrey/status/11950637621186560 http://twitter.com/#!/lizthegrey/status/11950637621186560
- mikecane 16y agoJust to update further. It requires something more than what's in the tweets and will not be done for some time. Ugh. I keep getting that block when searching.
- Raphael 16y agoSeriously. Excuse me for enjoying the service so much that I make dozens of quirky queries.
- mikecane 16y agoSee below. There's been a fix.
- rflrob 16y agoYou'd think for a Books fail, one might have had the whale be white. Even better if you have Ahab attached to it with a harpoon, but that might be a little grisly for an error page.