[coding123]

I'm assuming Seattlites would be able to confirm.

However as much discussion we've had about the internet remembering everything, I can't find anything in Google to confirm "Microsoft Coffee" except for this site, discussion of it on Reddit 13 hours ago.

[passivate]

Google's index isn't as vast as they claim. Their "About 5,780,000,000 results" is a gross exaggeration. You can't actually view all those results even if you tried.

[orbital-decay]

Most engines are also very aggressive at de-prioritizing abandoned sites, so most of the content from 90s essentially gone dark - it's indexed but cannot be found unless you know exactly what to look for.

[passivate]

Either way, it is funny that they claim to have millions of results, yet you can't go past Page 11.

[nitrogen]

At least it does go to eleven. Most amps only go to ten.

I hope that if you're being serious about 11 being the max, that it was a deliberate reference.

[passivate]

Touche! :)

[lupire]

That's not true. You just have to click the "with the omited results included" at the bottom of page 11, and that gives you many more pages.

[passivate]

Oh, I didn't mean you get 11 pages for every single query. I do know about the omitted results (but thanks for pointing it out, as its not obvious to many!), I used 11 as a placeholder since the final page # varies by query. Like, I get ~50 pages for 'icecream' out of the supposed 8 million or so. Crazy!

AFAIK there is no way to view all of those millions of results that they claim to have.

[roghummal]

abandoned or done?

[devindotcom]

Egghead Software, which I visited a lot at the time because my parents' office was right around the corner, was at I think 4th and University, or somewhere around there. KOMO and the other stations are adjacent to downtown so it would be easy for them to come snag the box before MS PR descended.

Honestly this prank makes more sense to me as a forgotten thing than as a modern meta-prank. I would not be surprised if Bill or some other prime mover from that era hears about it and confirms at some point.

[DanBC]

There's a bunch of real MS promotional merch that doesn't show up in search engines.

In the 1990s they released "drag 'n' drops" - a gummy candy in the shape of dragons. I can't find any mention of them.

[dpifke]

To get trademark protection in a particular class (e.g. candy belongs to class 30, "staple foods"), you have to demonstrate you are using the trademark in commerce.

Stuff like this seems whimsical, but it serves the very serious purpose of allowing Microsoft to claim exclusive use of their name in that class.

[brundolf]

Remember that the prank preceded the mainstream web, and MS PR clearly went to great lengths to cover it up. I don't think the internet was "remembering everything" yet at that point

[iso1210]

Usenet would have, there would be mentions on a pro or anti (mainly anti) microsoft group about it. It was 1996, not the stone age

Google has lost a lot of old posts from those days, but I'd be surprised if it would have lost all of them.

[dannyw]

Google's public index is just the short head, maybe even less than 5% of the internet by pages. Old stuff is more or less all pushed out unless its popular.

[lupire]

April 1996 was a long time ago, almost the dawn of the Internet as it relates to Microsoft.

Internet Explorer only launched in 1995, and the anti-Linux Halloween Documents were 1998.

[reaperducer]

I can't find anything in Google to confirm "Microsoft Coffee" except for this site, discussion of it on Reddit 13 hours ago.

Its choice not to display any information older than the attention span of a cracked out chipmunk is one of the main reasons I stopped using Google.

[brenschluss]

Real question: do you use any alternatives? I completely agree but have had a hard time finding other methods of searching information.

[marshmallow_12]

you don't do google justice. They are fully capable of displaying very outdated information. As an example, i recently wanted to look up election results from a certain country, a day after. Google decided to show me some tired, old news snippets from elections in 2015.

"stale as buns" is my phrase of choice.

[dannyw]

Try finding something from Google before 2007.

[marshmallow_12]

"google in 1996"? Google likes the buns but not the whisky i guess.

(even i'm cringing at the metaphor, but if you think about it, it sums up what i'm trying to say. Pretty well)

[iso1210]

> I'm assuming Seattlites would be able to confirm.

Perhaps, however remember the Mandela Effect. I'd expect ong time KOMO viewers and staff to recognise the presenters, and I'm sure they were the right ones. I wouldn't trust their recollection of this story though, especially once they had seen the video - after all the camera never lies.

Remember news anchors read dozens of these stories a day, to recall one specific prank 25 years later isn't likely. Unlikely KOMO still have recordings of their output from back then.

[WalterBright]

I still remember the prank from the late 1980s when KING ran a story that the Space Needle fell over.

KING ran retractions for days, and did their best to bury the footage.

I saw it when KING ran it, and had a good laugh. It was an obvious prank (the video looked like a bad cut & paste job, and the reporters were local comedians from "Almost Live"), but too bad a handful of humorless people ruined it.

I ran into Bill Nye some years later and asked him about it, and he replied they got into a lot of trouble for it.

[Someone]

1989, I guess. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xeio-CJ0qZ8

[WalterBright]

I miss Almost Live. When KING would run reruns of it, they never did that one. Anyhow, they stopped all AL reruns a year or two ago. Sad.

[desi_ninja]

this has more details of what happened on that April's fools day https://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-culture/2013/05/an-oral-...

[WalterBright]

Since about 10 years ago, Seattle started taking itself too seriously. It desperately needs a local humor show to add some balance, and what goes on is ripe for parody.

Almost Live was always making fun of Boeing, Microsoft, cops, local sports fans, anyone who lived in Kent, gangs, local hair metal bands, etc. All in good fun.

(They even got the hair metal band members to come on the show and parody themselves.)

[IncRnd]

I can't find anything to confirm the actual release advertisement of Turbo Pascal, either. There were later articles and those about later versions, but I guess Turbo Pascal never had a release advertisement. It's not indexed by Google.

[Zanni]

Here you go. Third result for me, searching for "ad for turbo pascal in byte magazine" (which is where I first remember seeing it): http://tech-insider.org/personal-computers/research/acrobat/...