The Viagra Oyster Email Hoax

George May had a clever idea: Let oysters soak in a solution of Viagra for a while, and then sell them as Viagra Oysters. Of course, Pfizer is objecting to this use of its drug, and food-safety officials don't like the idea of selling purposefully contaminated oysters. But still, May is confident he's got a successful product on his hands, and his idea has received quite a lot of media attention. So it pleased him, but didn't surprise him, when he received the following email from Google's corporate offices: Except, of course, Google doesn't send out congratulatory letters of this kind. If they did, they'd constantly be congratulating whoever was the latest internet-celebrity-of-the-day. The email was the work of a prankster who forged the "from" field. Or was it? Perhaps May cooked up the email himself to gain a little more media attention for himself. He's denying this allegation, but it seems plausible to me since he's the one benefitting from the hoax -- and because his first reaction on receiving the email was to call the media and tell them about it.

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