Home Google Books’ “Page Not Found” is a Whale Fail, Not a Fail Whale

Google Books’ “Page Not Found” is a Whale Fail, Not a Fail Whale

I’d like to take a moment out of your regularly scheduled tech news reading to point out something that just made my day: Google Books has a great “page not found page.” It’s a “Whale Fail,” not a “Fail Whale.”

The page is a play on words referring to Twitter’s “Fail Whale,” the well-known “Twitter down” page that became famous – or rather, infamous – during Twitter’s heavy growth period back in 2008.

?The “Fail Whale” (read the backstory here), transformed itself from a simple error message to a social object representing the community’s love for the struggling micro-blogging service. Google Books’ “Whale Fail,” depicting a scene from Moby Dick, may not go quite that far. But it sure gave me a laugh today.

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