Google will ‘drop everything’ -- to fix the cheese on this hamburger emoji
Google has a lot going on right now. The company is launching its flagship Pixel 2 smart phone, teaching supercomputers how to play board games, developing self-driving cars, delivering Wi-Fi from weather balloons - and doing all the other Google stuff, like running YouTube and Gmail and Search.
But Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai has promised to drop everything Monday to address a major issue: the cheese in Google’s hamburger emoji is in a weird place.
The debate started when media consultant Thomas Baekdal tweeted that “we need to have a discussion” about the difference between how the ingredients are arranged in Apple’s and Google’s emoji versions of a hamburger. Apple places the cheese directly on top of the meat patty, while Google’s slice is way at the bottom, resting on the bun.
I think we need to have a discussion about how Google's burger emoji is placing the cheese underneath the burger, while Apple puts it on top pic.twitter.com/PgXmCkY3Yc
— Thomas Baekdal (@baekdal) October 28, 2017
The tweet was retweeted nearly 17,000 times and sparked a sort of existential crisis on the internet as people struggled to agree on what the ideal burger would look like. Does the cheese always go on top of the patty, to make sure it gets a nice melt? Or maybe it goes under the patty, but above the lettuce? Should there even be lettuce? So wait, where does the tomato go?
They're both wrong. Google's cheese is wrong, Apple's lettuce is wrong. The correct order, from bottom up, is burger - cheese - toppings pic.twitter.com/lF1AUu64ht
— Mark Goodge (@MarkGoodge) October 28, 2017
I've never given much thought to it, but next time I buy a burger, I'll be critiquing the technique
— Patrick M. (@sfpodge) October 29, 2017
Commenters tagged top chefs and food scientists and pulled up images of other hamburger emojis from other companies. Still, the debate raged. Technology journalist and designer Glenn Fleishman posted a poll, trying to find a definitive answer in all the madness. Most people agreed with Apple’s version of the burger.
Hamburger is
— (@GlennF) October 29, 2017
Eventually, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai stepped in, and declared that would “drop everything else we are doing and address (this).”
Will drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday:) if folks can agree on the correct way to do this! https://t.co/dXRuZnX1Ag
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) October 29, 2017
As of Monday morning, the controversy is still boiling, with about 1,600 comments under Pichai’s tweet all trying to advise him on how to make (draw?) the perfect hamburger. Pichai said it would be fixed “if folks can agree on the correct way to do this.” That task may be too much for the internet to handle.
This story was originally published October 30, 2017 at 6:58 AM with the headline "Google will ‘drop everything’ -- to fix the cheese on this hamburger emoji."