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> Do you think that someone whose IP is located in Utah should get the same result for "good hamburgers late night" Yes, I absolutely do. What if they want to

> Do you think that someone whose IP is located in Utah should get the same result for "good hamburgers late night" Yes, I absolutely do. What if they want to find out what "people in general, according to Google" think and write about that? That question isn't even possible anymore, if you will. > If someone from Vietnam searches for "Vietnam War"...should they be sent to the entry at vi.wikipedia.org because it's in Vietnamese and perhaps more relevant to the Vietnam user? No, because "Vietnam War" is an English phrase. I doubt it's spelled that way in Vietnamese. > of a worldview in which there is One True Web for everyone, which seems as problematic How so? When I watch a movie, I see what everybody sees. If it's full of advertisement or laced with propaganda, I know it's that way for everybody. I think that has value in itself. Not every query is about getting what I want, sometimes I want to see "how the world is", and for that purpose Google, Facebook and others aren't helping with their being overly helpful. Others may feel different, but FWIW, I never heard anyone say that typing "ordering pizza in X" is just too much work compared to just typing "ordering pizza". Thinking such things are neat were, as far as I can tell, unilateral decisions made by these corporations. Nobody asked for it, nobody would miss it, and I think it's harmful just for destroying the idea of a "consensus reality" on the web even being possible.

danso 11y ago
Google's mission statement is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Currently, their opinion is that when a user searches for "late night hamburger place", the information most useful to that user is a late night hamburger place near the user, if there is such a place nearby with a statistically significant amount of noteworthiness, i.e. not just a random blog post from another user near me in Palo Alto that mentions how they loved eating Shake Shack in New York. Your opinion is that what is usable to people around the world is knowing which page ranks highest according to a metric such as PageRank when it comes to "late night hamburger place". Because numerical metrics is "how the world is". There's no way you could be a casual habitant of Earth and think that that's how many other people evaluate things in this world. But here's an example: What if a user types, "late night hamburger place near me"? How should Google interpret that? At what point does "pure" PageRank shut off and "Google as the new Yellow Pages" kick in? That in itself is an opinion not just about how information should be organized and what is useful, but about linguistics: whether or not that query is interpreted as a question or a user typing in the words he remembers from a song he likes and hoping that this blind query finds it.
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  > Your opinion is that what is usable to people around the world is knowing which page ranks highest according to a metric such as PageRank when it comes to "late night hamburger place". Because numerical metrics is "how the world is". There's no way you could be a casual habitant of Earth and think that that's how many other people evaluate things in this world. Yes, and? The question was what I find better. I answered that. That others find something else better is not relevant to what I find better. I'm more than just a casual habitant of Earth and I notice people generally gobble up anything just because it's there and someone is pushing it. The success of corp X or Y means as much as the success of Hitler to me, I still have to make up my OWN mind, people are mostly useless even as individuals and doubly so in aggregate. What they like or don't like doesn't matter unless they can present a good argument for it. Yes, I'm arrogant. And I do not expect Google to agree, they "have a business to run". But that doesn't change my opinion. Also, I said "how the world is according to Google". > But here's an example: What if a user types, "late night hamburger place near me"? How should Google interpret that? Where to buy product X or eat Y is below even trivial, I find it nauseating but not surprising that such stuff is constantly brought up. And yet that's the "killer application" I have to find a replacement for, with "why would anyone even think about that much less spend one second programming anything related to it" not being a valid answer, and my concerns about people seeing what others see not even worth being mentioned, much less addressed. Don't interpret it at all, and people will have to be more specific, try out various phrases, which they will learn to do quickly. Adding "in [name of city]" to a query shouldn't be that hard. Also, I'm tired of "information" being held hostage by what is merely about products and those who sell them. Yes, technically that's information too, but it's a very high-minded word for the lowliest of human aspirations in my books. The ones that matter when I am (indirectly) asked what I like or don't like.

danso 11y ago

Google's mission statement is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Currently, their opinion is that when a user searches for "late night hamburger place", the information most useful to that user is a late night hamburger place near the user, if there is such a place nearby with a statistically significant amount of noteworthiness, i.e. not just a random blog post from another user near me in Palo Alto that mentions how they loved eating Shake Shack in New York. Your opinion is that what is usable to people around the world is knowing which page ranks highest according to a metric such as PageRank when it comes to "late night hamburger place". Because numerical metrics is "how the world is". There's no way you could be a casual habitant of Earth and think that that's how many other people evaluate things in this world. But here's an example: What if a user types, "late night hamburger place near me"? How should Google interpret that? At what point does "pure" PageRank shut off and "Google as the new Yellow Pages" kick in? That in itself is an opinion not just about how information should be organized and what is useful, but about linguistics: whether or not that query is interpreted as a question or a user typing in the words he remembers from a song he likes and hoping that this blind query finds it.

PavlovsCat 11y ago
> Your opinion is that what is usable to people around the world is knowing which page ranks highest according to a metric such as PageRank when it comes to "late night hamburger place". Because numerical metrics is "how the world is". There's no way you could be a casual habitant of Earth and think that that's how many other people evaluate things in this world. Yes, and? The question was what I find better. I answered that. That others find something else better is not relevant to what I find better. I'm more than just a casual habitant of Earth and I notice people generally gobble up anything just because it's there and someone is pushing it. The success of corp X or Y means as much as the success of Hitler to me, I still have to make up my OWN mind, people are mostly useless even as individuals and doubly so in aggregate. What they like or don't like doesn't matter unless they can present a good argument for it. Yes, I'm arrogant. And I do not expect Google to agree, they "have a business to run". But that doesn't change my opinion. Also, I said "how the world is according to Google". > But here's an example: What if a user types, "late night hamburger place near me"? How should Google interpret that? Where to buy product X or eat Y is below even trivial, I find it nauseating but not surprising that such stuff is constantly brought up. And yet that's the "killer application" I have to find a replacement for, with "why would anyone even think about that much less spend one second programming anything related to it" not being a valid answer, and my concerns about people seeing what others see not even worth being mentioned, much less addressed. Don't interpret it at all, and people will have to be more specific, try out various phrases, which they will learn to do quickly. Adding "in [name of city]" to a query shouldn't be that hard. Also, I'm tired of "information" being held hostage by what is merely about products and those who sell them. Yes, technically that's information too, but it's a very high-minded word for the lowliest of human aspirations in my books. The ones that matter when I am (indirectly) asked what I like or don't like.