
The bug that almost killed Google's Pac-Man doodle - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/pac-man-s-siren-call-4b589ea1d1e
======
nostrademons
I did one of the code reviews for the Pac-Man doodle (and actually, the part I
was responsible for reviewing focused specifically on sound, so this was kinda
my bad). We had an early sneak-peak: Marcin was a UX designer for what was my
80% project at the time, so he'd passed it around the office looking for
feedback.

One of the factors we'd identified in the post-mortem was actually the
difference in Google culture vs. the rest of the world culture. When we heard
strange whirring noises coming from nearby computers in the office, our first
impulse was "Woah, that's really cool! We're seriously going to launch this on
the home page? Can I help?" While at many other offices, if you hear strange
whirring noises from an employee's computer, the reaction is "You're fired!"

Similar cultural mismatches have been responsible for a few other gaffes, eg.
Google Buzz was a huge hit internally because pretty much everything inside
Google is (was?) public anyway and people are very tolerant of different
opinions, and it never occurred to us that people could be seriously harmed by
others' knowing details of their lives.

~~~
teddyh
> _it never occurred to us [Google] that people could be seriously harmed by
> others ' knowing details of their lives._

This explains _so much_.

EDIT: A year ago I wrote this, and it seems I was right:

> _Google is self-selecting to employ those people who are fine with the idea
> of Google recording everything they do. This does not bode well for the rest
> of us._

([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8591417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8591417))

~~~
nostrademons
It actually was far worse in the past than it is now, both because Google
management does learn from their mistakes and because Google is much bigger
now and so they employ more people from marginalized backgrounds.

I'd say that peak "all your data are belong to us" was back in 2010, before
the launch of Google Buzz and various location/wifi privacy flaps in Europe.

I would be more worried now about the same dynamic existing in every other
startup that takes off. When a startup is on a break-out trajectory, it has
its pick of applicants from a wide number of elite institutions. Most of them
will never have experienced powerlessness or marginalization, because _that 's
what it takes to get into a hot startup_. And so they generally won't be able
to empathize with what it's like to have arbitrary fact X in your background
taken and used against you in devastating ways, even if they do genuinely
sympathize.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> I would be more worried now about the same dynamic existing in every other
> startup that takes off. When a startup is on a break-out trajectory, it has
> its pick of applicants from a wide number of elite institutions. Most of
> them will never have experienced powerlessness or marginalization, because
> that's what it takes to get into a hot startup. And so they generally won't
> be able to empathize with what it's like to have arbitrary fact X in your
> background taken and used against you in devastating ways, even if they do
> genuinely sympathize.

That's not "what it takes to get into a hot startup"; it's a self-selecting
property that people reinforce, consciously or otherwise. You can and should
make a conscious effort to counter that bias, and leaving aside all the other
reasons you might want to do so, you'll counter the monoculture that can lead
to "let's build things people like us want" (which fails if it becomes "and
almost nobody else does").

~~~
nostrademons
I don't disagree, but at the same time: who gets hired by hot startups is not
something under my control, and they have legitimate reasons (mixed in with
illegitimate ones) for preferring people with a solid track record and name-
brand affiliations.

------
ph33t
I am of the opinion that web sites should _never_ make noise automatically.
Never, no matter what site. I often have my sound on without even realizing
it. Nothing is more disturbing to me or those near me than me going to a site
and having stuff come over the speaker. I almost always close the tab
immediately. Please never autoplay anything.

~~~
greggman
You must never use youtube then? That seems to be a popular site

~~~
krapp
Even on youtube, autoplay is annoying.

~~~
ant6n
Especially when you re-open some browser session and then one of those tabs
happens to be a youtube one playing some video.

~~~
timothya
That shouldn't happen in Safari or Chrome anymore - videos don't autoplay
until you actually open the tab for the first time.

------
Johnny555
The real problem was autoplaying the sound -- they should not have auto-
enabled sound... if they were worried that users wouldn't know there was
sound, they could have put in a prominent button to turn it on, but auto-sound
sucks.

There are plenty of ways to trigger it accidentally, like loading Google, then
walking away from your desk, or doing a google search in a presentation and
pausing to talk about something.

I might expect an autoplaying video with sound at a news or social media site,
but I certainly wouldn't expect it from Google.com

------
kbrosnan
I remember this day which was fairly close to when I was hired at Mozilla.
What this looked like from the Mozilla side several bugs filed [1]. Support
forums had hundreds of questions about this [2][3]. The data from
input.mozilla.org is gone or archived offline, I recall that blowing up as
well. I vaguely recall this doodle causing a graphics crash on a specific set
of hardware as well (though maybe that was a different doodle).

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=567398%...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=567398%2C567402%2C567406%2C567431%2C567445%2C567453%2C567456)
[2]
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ainput.moz...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ainput.mozilla.org%20pacman%20coolpreviews#hl=en&q=site:support.mozilla.org+pacman+coolpreviews)
[3]
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Amozillazi...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Amozillazine.org%20pacman%20coolpreviews)

------
ilyanep
I love these kinds of stories. They're like the programmer's version of a
detective story, with the twist that you always somehow learn some weird
obscure fact about people or the Internet:

\- A web browser plug-in loads Google's homepage in the background.

\- There's a weird standard to writing Polish characters with diacritics.

\- Some Windows systems carry around this decades-old bitmapped font.

I think it's similar to why I love those lists titled "X myths that
programmers believe about Y". It's insane how varied the world is and how that
comes out when we deal with as many domains as we do when programming.

~~~
TacticalTable
Reminds me of the 500 mile email, my absolute favorite bug story:
[http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html](http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html)

~~~
jacquesm
That's a classic.

------
jfoutz
I really don't like the last step of the post-mortem. "Who is to blame?" I
much much prefer "how did the system fail?" We want engineers trying crazy
things and hit bumpers when they, for example, autoplay sound. The alternative
is being hesitant about trying crazy things.

I mean, yeah, personal responsibility, but google already has a preflight
checklist with code reviews and tests and such. Treating it as a systemic
feature protects a lot of stuff you want.

~~~
nostrademons
I was a little surprised he added that, because

1.) post-mortems at Google don't blame people, they blame processes, and then
they suggest ways those processes could be fixed.

2.) I know Marcin personally and I've never known him to blame anyone either.
And indeed, he didn't: the takeaway from the article was that the complexity
of the web was at fault.

My best guess is that he included that because many _other_ organizations who
do post-mortems, who he might want to reach with his writing, do think in
terms of "Who is to blame?", and addressing it explicitly may be better than
leaving it unanswered.

------
chavesn
Where did this title come from? Not only is it not the title of the post in
question, but it's quite inaccurate -- the article doesn't even come close to
claiming that anything "almost killed" the doodle.

With that said, I clicked the click-bait title, and I enjoyed the article.
(shrug.)

------
jacquesm
Computers should be seen, not heard unless explicitly instructed to do so by
their users.

------
teen
this story is way too long for the amount of content.

tldr; google homepage pacman game auto played sound, and a browser extension
in firefox was silently loading google.com.

~~~
groby_b
That's sort of like saying that really, Sherlock Holmes stories are too long,
and the Hound of the Baskervilles merely was painted with phosphorus.

Telling a story in an entertaining way isn't just listing the facts.

~~~
wingerlang
The actual "bug hunt" wasn't really touched upon though:

> I don’t remember how exactly we figured it all out

------
TwoBit
It was Google's fault. You should never play sound for a user automatically. I
cringed when I read that before the article revealed the problem.

~~~
joemi
Indeed. I'm not really sure why the author went with "the complexity of the
web" is the real culprit. It was google, and specifically this guy's team,
that was at fault. They put auto-playing sound on one of the most popular
webpages in the world, and as he noted, this page never made sound before.

The rest of the article was an interesting read, but not fully taking the
blame seems wrong to me.

------
craigds
> The day I talked to my father for the last time

Was expecting some explaining of this bit, but it's the only time he mentions
it. That is indeed a crazy day!

------
userbinator
That reminds me of this, which was even more insidious and probably caused
more than a few unnecessary hardware replacements:

[http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f10/strange-
mysteriou...](http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f10/strange-mysterious-
two-random-scratch-sounds-intermittent-342048.html)

[http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/windows-xp-
computer-...](http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/windows-xp-computer-
makes-random-annoying-woosh-woosh-sound.619402/)

[http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/624611](http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/624611)

------
smcl
> We initially brushed off these complaints — “tell them to just close the
> Google homepage”

Yep, that sounds like Google support alright.

------
sudo_bang_bang
Awesome essay! It looks like some version of the source code at least is
available here:
[https://github.com/macek/google_pacman](https://github.com/macek/google_pacman)

------
sbuttgereit
An unrelated aside concerning the blog's author, Marcin Wichary. He's also a
photographer, including a number of wonderful photos of historical computer
equipment.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/albums/72157629963516...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/albums/72157629963516325)

When I read this blog post, I thought the name was familiar and was very
pleased to be reminded of his good work in this area as well.

------
benlower
I met Marcin at SXSW back in 2011 where he talked about this project (and
other doodles). Some more info is here [http://searchengineland.com/behind-
the-scenes-with-googles-d...](http://searchengineland.com/behind-the-scenes-
with-googles-doodlers-68049). Also invited him to come speak at Microsoft to
share more about his work (some interesting internal debates about a Googler
coming to talk at MSFT ;)

~~~
benlower
Here's a video presentation from I/O that has more background on the doodle
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttavBa4giPc&hd=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttavBa4giPc&hd=1)

------
kentt
> The other fun part is that, back in 2010, I also had to reintroduce a bug
> from the original Pac-Man code… but that’s a whole different article.

Any idea what the bug was?

~~~
splonk
IIRC it was the bug that allows you to pass through ghosts. I vaguely recall
learning about it because of something the author wrote when this was
released. Apparently speedrunners and the like have memorized patterns that
exploit this if you can play with perfect timing.

Explanation of the bug at
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossie...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossier.php?print=1),
in the section "Just Passing Through".

------
steven
Just sayin' that we see this as first of a series of amazing stories about
bugs--ones that are so vexing, with fixes so illuminating, that telling the
story casts light beyond the specific problem... If you got 'em, respond to
this piece on the page!

