I'm pretty sure I've read a similar story in the book "I'm Feeling Lucky". It goes like this:
In the early days of Froogle, a shopping search engine made by Google, searching for "sneakers" always yielded a garden gnome wearing sneakers, one unit on sale, as the top result. This was considered bad, as someone searching for "sneakers" probably wanted to buy sneakers, not garden gnomes. The whole team tried to fix it, but they didn't want to just hardcode an exception. It eluded them for a while. Finally, it was not there anymore. They asked around for who had solved it, no one answered. Finally, one colleague arrived late - and placed the gnome on their desk.
In the early days of Froogle, a shopping search engine made by Google, searching for "sneakers" always yielded a garden gnome wearing sneakers, one unit on sale, as the top result. This was considered bad, as someone searching for "sneakers" probably wanted to buy sneakers, not garden gnomes. The whole team tried to fix it, but they didn't want to just hardcode an exception. It eluded them for a while. Finally, it was not there anymore. They asked around for who had solved it, no one answered. Finally, one colleague arrived late - and placed the gnome on their desk.