A Secret Message from Google Brazil
Tuesday, 5th October 2010 by James Turnbull
Standing outside their offices in Belo Horizonte, we find the Google Team,
officially welcoming Street View to Brazil. We've recently heard rumors that, as with so many of Google's products, one of the engineers has a hidden message....
Perhaps it's this man, who's called Cabrito (or so his sign says). We presume he works for Google, but can't find him on LinkedIn. Is there a hidden message in the sign?
This is Kermit the Frog, we're pretty sure he doesn't work for Google. Why is he there? Is it another secret message?
Or is it these two guys, standing away from the main group? The image held by the man on the left is a QR code, a 2D barcode format that was originally made popular in Japan for printed weblinks, and is now used on Google's Favourite Places program. It must contain a secret message!
You can get apps for most mobile phones that will read the QR code and automatically direct you to the link contained. Sadly, due to the uneven paper on our Googler's sign, we are unable to read the QR code from the street view image.
However, using sophisticated image reconstruction techniques1, we can exclusively reveal the original QR code, and the secret message contained within, which is…
"Google Geo Engineering"
Oh.
Is that it?
-
"sophisticated" in so far as I redrew the QR code pixel-by-pixel. ↩︎
Gostei !
My phone’s camera can’t pick up your QR code next to the title of this post…must be because it’s gray scale or the text is over it.
You could view the image directly…
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/cache/txtimg/en/15524.gif
I edited the first paragraph a wee bit to help too…
That first guy has a google profile. Can you guess the url?
https://www.google.com/profiles/cabrito
Brilliant sleuthing LC! I see that Cabrito has also been reading this article…
http://www.google.com/buzz/cabrito/Hx8YJFNfdnC/Recursion-is-a-beautiful-thing-No-need-to-say-more
waves Hi Cabrito!
Hey, guys!
“Cabrito” is not that guy’s name! It’s funny to see you think so!
It must have been an internal joke among friends, as “Cabrito” is kind-a funny word here in Brazil, and it means “baby goat” — which I don’t think is any funny at all for English-speakers, but…
That’s it! ;-D
That frog is also one of the symbols of unicamp’s students association. I also think that (at least one) of the dudes is from there (i’m from there as well)… Name is CACO!!! (kermit on portuguese version)
http://www.caco.ic.unicamp.br/
Much as I admire your dedication in redrawing the QR code by hand, it looks like you missed a few black pixels out! (Look at the left hand edge just above the middle of the square, for instance – the black “P” shaped block on the Street View image is missing the middle row of pixels…)
Ah, good point Rob. Luckily QR codes have error correction to deal with at least 7% errors, so my missing pixels don’t affect the message.
Man, the kermit frog represents the academic computing center of the state university of Campinas. Academic computing center = Centro Academico de Computação wich is CACO. The kermit frog here in Brazil is called Caco. So, let’s see: http://www.caco.ic.unicamp.br/
😉