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MSN on DMOZ

what's up?

         

glengara

8:05 am on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



MSN banners are all over DMOZ as well as a changed look.

Have I missed something?

diddlydazz

10:54 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



no the forum is still there and some 'interesting threads' as you can probably imagine ;)

At least it gives me a break from editing (I would never edit for Bill Gates) for today.

Or maybe M$ has really bought ODP !!!

Imagine that !!

:O

Dazz

MarkHutch

10:58 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



In my view the direct comments about Bill Gates made this look more like a hack than an inside job. One of our sites was hacked by folks supporting Napster two years ago and it took awhile to repair the damage, even though we had good backups.

littleman

11:00 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)



Anybody else think that paperclip looks a little sleazy?

diddlydazz

11:02 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



LOL LOL

That mean little paper clip just told me to talk to him not the other editors :)

Dazz

Beachboy

11:11 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



[pandia.com...]

littleman

11:15 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)



from [dmoz.org...]
...Long live UNIX, LINUX, anything not Microshaft
...How do I remove viruses like NT?
...~~~~~~~you're getting very sleeeeeepy~~~~~
...Is that a thumbtack in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
...Please don't sue the ODP over this joke.
...Please stay calm and do not struggle. You will be assimilated in no time. Resistance is futile.
...Monopolies do it better
...Submit today while it's free.

Beachboy

11:16 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



"It is all a great prank, of course, but the ODP people responsible for it should hope and pray that Bill Gates & Co. has a sense of humor as big as their own. There are probably hundreds of lawyers out there itching to arrest them for using the Microsoft logo, and some AOL executives have probably been choking on their morning coffee."

--Pandia.

MarkHutch

11:24 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Bill Gates and Microsoft are not the people they should fear. The engineers at ODP that are having to work overtime to fix this are much closer to home and probably already know who is responsible!!

P.S. It looks like the site is back to normal now.

Beachboy

11:26 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Awwww. The fun went away.

:(

oilman

11:29 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It's still a little bit fun:
31 sites - 47,243 editors - -47,269 categories

apparently there's only 31 sites in it now :)

mivox

11:34 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The engineers at ODP that are having to work overtime to fix this are much closer to home and probably already know who is responsible!!

Yeah... most likely themselves, almost as though the whole thing were a big, oh, um.... APRIL FOOLS joke?

diddlydazz

11:36 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Thank **** for that I was getting worried :)

A google update now and I will be able to sleep :)

Dazz

Beachboy

11:39 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Ya know, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if someone high up at AOL headquarters got on the phone to someone at ODP and screamed like bloody murder. This had to be a big surprise at the parent company.

caine

11:40 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Well, that was a wake up call, and possibly the demise of freedom of the internet !

mivox

11:55 pm on Apr 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



This had to be a big surprise at the parent company.

Now that much I wouldn't doubt a bit...

jordancpeterson

12:03 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)



Whoa! I can’t believe some of you think this was a hack job! Unless you guys are playing an April Fools Joke yourself! And no, this could have not been a group of guys that work there that are getting ready to quit. Staff at the ODP consists of two people. :)

littleman

12:09 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)



They just switched it back.

MarkHutch

12:15 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>I can’t believe some of you think this was a hack job!<<

A Fortune 500 company playing April Fools jokes? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think there is anyway that a huge company like AOL would play a part in such trick or game. Maybe Enron!! but not AOL.

AOL believes in making money, and creating a mature company image... not playing tricks and games which will make them look bad on Wall Street.

Lisa

12:16 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The staff is two people! Wow. I want a job doing that.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if someone high up at AOL headquarters got on the phone to someone at ODP and screamed like bloody murder.

Well, having worked in many large corporations. And corporation that had parent corportions. You don't do anything major like this unless legal approves it. So I know that AOL HQ was aware of this prior.

Also note that one of the fake Press Releases appeared on a Netscape.com url. This was a huge AOL thing and not a tiny ODP thing. All of AOL is laughing at how they made fun of MSFT.

Perhaps MSFT is too smart to fight back legally because of public back lash it would appear the big MS company can't take a joke.

But it will be interesting to see if MSFT joins the war next year and pulls off something bigger.

msgraph

12:19 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



You don't wrongfully use a huge global empire's name, joke or whatever.

toolman

12:31 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>>>You don't wrongfully use a huge global empire's name, joke or whatever

Ahhh. It's ok msgraph. The only people who go to DMOZ are webmasters looking to submit their site to get the PR boost in Google. They all understand and most likely applaud the "joke" and it ends there.

Isn't it amazing how litigiously brainwashed the world is becoming? Is everyone so afraid?

diddlydazz

12:35 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



A joke.

A Good joke, I nearly had a cardiac arrest when I saw it as I am sure others did.

As far as I am concerned well done ODP, it has taken my mind off the google update for a few hours :)

Micro$oft needs bringing down a peg or two.

IMHO

Dazz

msgraph

12:40 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>>The only people who go to DMOZ are webmasters looking to submit their site to get the PR boost in Google

Ain't that the truth ;)

Probably why it hasn't been picked up by the news sites yet.

Lisa

12:50 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I did a search on Google for dmoz [google.com], they have the fresh update in there for "MDP - Microsoft Directory Project". I like that!

It is funny that no news papers have reported on this.

But there are some other funny april fools news stories [news.google.com] on Google.

This story is local to me. Wow, I would hate to have this one played on me. Prankster sends out false jury summonses [seattlep-i.nwsource.com]

jordancpeterson

1:42 am on Apr 2, 2002 (gmt 0)



Hey! Search Day newsletter was having a lot of fun! [searchenginewatch.com...] The Internet is a lot more prone to jokes like this. And ODP did something like this last year! :)

Continued in Part Two: [webmasterworld.com...]

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