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Famous comedian, writer, and filmmaker Jerry Seinfeld started leaving hilarious business reviews on Google Maps last Friday, having opted to do so as a way to promote his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The 64-year-old presently has four reviews to his name and a dozen contributions overall, most of which come in the form of images taken during the more spontaneous moments of the already spontaneous show. Ellen DeGeneres, Dave Chappelle, Jerry Lewis, Tracy Morgan, and Kate McKinnon are just some of the high-profile names from showbusiness that ended up starring in Seinfeld’s reviews one way or another, with the submissions themselves all being publicly available for viewing by referring to the banner below.
“Food portions are so big you’ll need a spotter;” “Try their Non Ti Scordar di Me with a side of Fontina e Tartufi Bianchi d’Alba – whole [sic] thing can be put on bread [sic] to make a sandwich;” “They failed their health inspection when they found faces in the food,” writes Seinfeld in some of his reviews. To date, the comedian left reviews of restaurants in New York City, New Jersey, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C. The publicity stunt appears to have been self-initiated as it isn’t part of any known collaboration with Google. The Mountain View, California-based tech giant is still no stranger to having famous people promote its products and services; its crowdsourced navigation app Waze has been starring celebrity voices for years now, featuring guest appearances from the likes of Morgan Freeman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Liam Neeson.
Google Search also caters to people interested in following various celebrities as of late last year, with the world’s most popular Internet search engine doing so through celebrity video responses that feature Will Ferrell explaining the mechanics of kissing someone, Mark Wahlberg revealing his dominant hand, and Seth MacFarlane explaining why he adores musicals, among many other famous people and topics. Google Maps itself has also been used for a broad range of cross-promotions in the past, featuring Easter eggs related to famous gaming series such as Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda. Finally, Google’s Search engine has been hiding one Easter egg for Seinfeld fans for years now; to discover it, just search for “festivus.”