Microsoft cloaks Area 51

Bill G developing alien stealth technology?

By Lester Haines • Get more from this author

Posted in Bootnotes, 27th July 2005 13:59 GMT

Black helicopter alert We all know that Microsoft has a tentacle in just about every pie on the planet, but what exactly is Redmond's black ops department up to in Nevada?

This chilling question arises because Microsoft's Virtual Earth has excised all satellite data of the legendary Area 51, leaving a great big grey void filled only with hundreds of hovering black helicopters:

Google, on the other hand, offers this fine view of the Top Secret desert facility, famed for its alien post-mortems, flying saucers and general extraterrestrial shenanigans:

Yup, if you look closely you can just make out what appears to be a heavily-disguised Steve Ballmer wheeling an alien corpse on a gurney from the wreckage of a fission-powered interplanetary craft. Either that or it's some bloke emptying the bins. Further analysis is clearly required.

Until such time as the truth is known, we wonder what exactly MS has to gain from this cloak of invisibity. After all, the internet is chock-full of Area 51 info, maps and satellite images. Try this website, for example - a veritable cornucopia of conspiracy goodies.

And while you peruse this invaluable online resource, keep one eye fixed firmly on the skies. The next unidentified flying object you spot may not be visitors from Alpha Centauri looking for a farm hand to anally probe, but rather the MS X-X-Box, an XP/SP2-controlled stealth vehicle constructed from mysterious yet improbably strong alien alloys and now offering a raft of new and indispensible features for the Office 2003 suite, including the ability to genetically alter Word documents at a sublinear level. ®