It's not often that Google finds itself the butt of an Internet joke, but then again it's not often that it opens up the opportunity to do so.
On Thursday, Google made a rare, high-profile fail when it appeared to jump the gun on its third-quarter earnings release. While the stock plummeted as much as 9% after the announcement, Internet jokesters seized on the words "PENDING LARRY QUOTE" which appears at the top of the company's SEC filing. The words presumably refer to Google CEO Larry Page.
Faster than you could say "Binders Full of Women," a Twitter account for Pending Larry appeared. (First tweet: "..oops.") The term also briefly trended nationally on Twitter.
So far, Pending Larry has delivered the best one-liner on the event:
To be fair, we released our earnings yesterday afternoon on Google Plus.— Pending Larry (@PendingLarry) October 18, 2012