This was added in 2004. Before this change, the error message was:
> If too many of these happen, someone will be paged. If you still see this after half an hour, send mail to xxxxxxxxxxx@google.com
(For curious folks working for Hooli, the magic number is 472481)
I’m getting an imgur error page, but it seems this post is meant to be an image of a Google error page?
I’ve reached the error page of the image of the error page for the error page. We’re too deep.
Imgur really hates VPNs, and will show that bogus error page if you're not using a "nice" connection.
Lol, so meta.
Also: very sad, but it would be great if it was just imgur doing this; it's the whole internet.
Now to refresh this comment until HN randomly goes down
You have reached the error reply to your valued comment. Please send this comment in an email to all your relatives or a bunny will die.
FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: Very Important !!!
“We're having some trouble serving your request. Sorry!”
You found the easter egg gem!
The fact that google's engineers cared about doing that it's pretty funny
Probably done over a decade ago. Today we wouldn't see this
oh, for sureee
That explains why we aren’t talking about it today then.
Source code isn’t written afresh every day. The point was the code was written at a different era and the current era wouldn’t produce this sort of code, and presumably you wouldn’t see anything but a generic 500. This is likely because product managers can’t stand free thought and action amongst engineers as it doesn’t appease their bean counter overlords sufficiently.
You don’t know when that was written.
It had been written by (at the latest) September 2008:
https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/best-gmail-error-m...
Wow, seeing someone (presumably) unironically saying "This is why we love Google" was definitely a throwback to an earlier time. https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/best-gmail-error-m...
That’s pretty presumptuous, but especially so when there are comments parallel from googlers pinning the date and it’s easily determined by using this very powerful information retrieval tool called “Google.” Not to mention the possibility I work at Google, or that I wrote it myself!
If you use Google to find this string you will find very old references. (“Very old” is relative)
Error page of the error page made me smile. Somehow, this makes total sense to me. Consider a reverse proxy where the origin is down and displaying the 'real' error page is not possible because of that. Alternatively, imagine a CloudFront function or Lambda experiencing the same issue, or encountering so many redirects that it interrupts and simply shows the error page of the error page. Nonetheless, I agree that you shouldn't see this issue very often.
Confuse your coworkers by telling them you "won Gmail once".
They'll just think you're going senile and politely agree, telling you to go back and surf the information superhighway.
Always leave a message in "impossible" code paths, you never know who might read it in the end.
You have 7 different gmail accounts eh?
Yeah unfortunately they are tricky to get rid of once you have them. In theory I can forward the email from one account to another, but in practice it's hard to think through all the weird security issues that might arise from doing so.
I've got one I made as a teen, a more professional sounding mature address, one for school, two for two separate google apps domains, and one for work. They pile up over time.
The funny thing is, this error message is hardly less useful than the recent trend of error messages which say only, "Something went wrong".
At least it’s not https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594.
Have you never dealt with customers reporting errors?
Something went wrong is what they will tell you and expect an answer. Doesn’t matter how fancy and detailed the error, you will get back, “it’s broken fix it.”
Back in the early days of my career and supporting end users, I used to constantly get people say:
“xxx doesn’t work. I just get an error”
“I don’t remember. I’ve closed it now”.
Maybe all errors should be presented with a simple, distinctive and memorable theme - e.g. show a pig photo in that one maybe they'll remember "I got the pig error"
Could make cute pictures and brighten support staffs day. 'I got a pig telling a chicken that the barn is closed??'
I was thinking celebrities, but then people will misidentify them.
Each micro-service (in 2025?!?!) would have different pictures of a particular celebrity, for different errors.. so if the user says e.g. "I see Taylor Swift doing..." the support can say "Let me forward you to the S3 people!".
lmfao this is genius and would work better than text
That’s a good idea - and even technical users would find that more memorable than 1198854 versus a 1197854 error.
I think you're going to find people mistaking one animal for another.
> Maybe all errors should be presented with a simple, distinctive and memorable theme - e.g. show a pig photo in that one maybe they'll remember "I got the pig error"
This sounds like the thing that they do in parking garages where each level will have a color, an image, or sometimes even a musical theme. (Which is to say, it sounds like a good idea!)
You can dunk on lay people all you want, personally I'm a lot more furious about fellow programmers who thinks it's OK to show an error that says "file not found" without any context like the filename.
Like, help a brother out!
Writing helpful error messages is definitely a skill. And I too get annoyed at unhelpful error messages.
But I don’t think your point invalidates mine.
What would you expect? IME these are mostly unforeseen 500 errors, logged internally, and not something a client can do anything about (or should know anything about, for security reasons).