Google ride finder

[iago]

http://labs.google.com/ridefinder

That's possibly the coolest April 1st joke yet!

[Newby]

Nah, Gmail was.

[Mangix]

ride finder lmao. that would require google's Keyhole thing .

[hismajesty]

What's so funny about it? It just lists cab company phone numbers and stufff. I don't get it the joke?

[Mangix]

the joke is that its fake. it doesnt even find the cabs. GG.

[Adron]

the joke is that its fake. it doesnt even find the cabs. GG.

What makes it a .. well, flawed April 1st joke is that it's such a neat and possible idea. I'm pretty sure cab companies track their cars. It would be easy to do with GPS and the radio links they already have. A screen like that is probably available to cab company operators. The only reason it isn't available to the public is that noone bothered doing it yet. Same with the pizza ordering idea - Blizzard could implement that in no time. What made that a better April 1st joke was the fortune cookie additions, etc.

I.e. there's no reason to think this is an April 1st joke.

Btw, what if gmail had been started on April 1st?

[hismajesty]

GMail did start on April 1st, that's why the space went up on their "one year birthday." Remember last year everyone thought 1gb storage was an April Fools joke.

I didn't understand that this tracked cabs at first, but now looking at it again I see. I don't really think this is a full April Fools joke, since the Google Gulp (which was obvious) is done in a more humerous way. This doesn't offer any indication that it's not real, and since it's still in the development stage they could just be fake cabs there for examples?

I forget the exact percentage, but a good percentage of the Google employees time goes to their own individual project - they get paid to do what they want, basically.