5 ms·

Missing the point entirely. Yes, Google worked as it was intended to work. No, how Google is intended to work is not the ideal solution for the problem people

Missing the point entirely. Yes, Google worked as it was intended to work. No, how Google is intended to work is not the ideal solution for the problem people are trying to solve when they use Google. It's the wrong solution. That's the point.

philcrissman 17y ago
Okay, if I follow you, you're saying that because people are trying to use Google (or, let's just say, "Search") for a purpose other than it was intended, it's the wrong solution. That's really not too different from what I wrote; except I'm saying: people should be _expected to recognize_ that they're using the wrong solution, and that they need a different solution. You seem to be suggesting that _Search_ should change something to suit the people who are using it "wrong". (Feel free to correct me on that.) It sounds like you're saying "Search should know what you _intend_ to look for, not just what you _typed into the search field_". I'm not sure I expect an algorithm to know our _intentions_. (Though Google's 'did you mean...' is clearly already trying to accomplish this, as much as possible.)
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  I am pretty much saying that Google/Search should find what I intend to look for rather than its interpretation of what I type into the search field. Because that's clearly how the general public intends to use Google/Search. The only reason I don't use it that way is that I've learned to adapt to its shortcomings. I'm better than most at finding what I want using Google because I've learned to speak in Googlese, so to speak. How to frame my query in a way that returns what I want. I've adapted to the tool rather than the other way around. Clearly that's a bit much to expect of the masses, who are very often frustrated by Google/Search. I'm not running down the masses here. They want to get things done. We have very basic tools to help them, I'm arguing that our tools should be orders of magnitude more sophisticated. Sure it's hard, and while that response may be satisfying for engineers, that doesn't solve the problem people are trying to solve when they use Google/Search. And honestly, there's just something plain wrong with your algorithm when it returns a news story as a top result for "facebook login". It's a safe bet that is NOT the result 99.999% of the users are looking for when they type that in. And if you're failing your users a very high percentage of the time, the problem simply does not lie with your users.
  - philcrissman 17y ago
    I honestly don't think I actually disagree with what you're saying; I just still don't see this as a "failure" on Google's part, and that was the impetus for the post. I don't think Google should have been expected to anticipate this sort of thing. Learn from it? Sure. Expect it? I still don't think so.
- stingraycharles 17y ago
  This whole discussion can be summed up with "know your audience". If you have stupid people in your audience, you should design for stupid people; companies like Facebook and Google should design for stupid people, the rest of the world doesn't. In the end, it's Google's responsibility to find the correct page for what it's users are looking for, even if they're using it as some sort of web-CLI for the wrong purpose. Google has the stupid people in its audience, so Google should design for them. Heck, Google should be able to detect a person's intentions; not sure if they can, but at least I guess it would be possible to classify websites as stupid and people as stupid, and match accordingly.
  - epochwolf 17y ago
    Can you actually design for stupidity without making the experience painful for people of more average intelligence? Sidenote: Don't bring up geeks. Geeks are so far advanced on technological intelligence to be gods to the mere mortals around them.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  But they may not know of any other solution. I actually had a similar problem just an hour ago. I needed to look up the price of a piece of metalworking equipment. Since I had purchased items from Wholesale Tool in the past, I entered "www.wholesaletool.com" into Firefox. Then spent the next few minutes trying to figure out why my search for a 1-inch threading die wasn't turning up anything useful. It turns out that the site I really needed was www.wttool.com instead! And I'm a software dev who spends a lot of time on the web! How much longer would a non-expert have wasted before figuring this out? It's not necessarily anyone's fault; it's just that the web can be awfully confusing at times!
  - brown9-2 17y ago
    For this to be a fair comparison you would have had to have been browsing a news article about wholesale tools and trying to purchase a tool from this news article. You mistook one wholesale tool store for another, whereas these users confused a news article about facebook's redesign for the place where you login to facebook.
iBercovich 17y ago
I agree. You build a tool to solve a problem, not for the building sake. And if it turns out the consumers are using your tool for a different purpose, it is in your own interest to understand this new use and optimize your tool to fulfill that previously unnoticed problem.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  if it turns out the consumers are using your tool for a different purpose, it is in your own interest to understand this new use and optimize your tool to fulfill that previously unnoticed problem. Amen! That last bit is quotable!
  - seanos 17y ago
    I once read a story about a Chinese company who built washing machines and found that they were getting lots of warranty claims after people had broken them trying to wash potatoes. Instead of putting a notice on the machines not to use them to clean potatoes, they successfully developed and marketed a dual purpose machine. http://www.connectedaustralia.com/News/Trends/tabid/121/selectmoduleid/579/ArticleID/2694/reftab/121/Default.aspx http://www.connectedaustralia.com/News/Trends/tabid/121/sele...
    - iBercovich 17y ago
      That is exactly what I am talking about!
- zaphar 17y ago
  And yet to borrow from a commenter on the post. If you complain to a tool company about your hammer being a sucky screwdriver what exactly should the tool company to do? Make the hammer a better screwdriver? or point the user to the real screwdriver? Sometimes the solution isn't to optimize your tool for something it can't do very well but to build a new tool that does do it well. I think turning Google the search engine into a site redirection service for keywords ala AOL falls into that category.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
lmkg 17y ago
That depends on how you slice the phrase "intended to." Google is not supposed to return whatever Page Rank spits out, it's supposed to return the most relevant page to the user's query. Page Rank is a means to an end. If Page Rank is returning an article about facebook logins, rather than the facebook login, for the search query 'facebook login,' I would not consider it to be working as intended.
- protomyth 17y ago
  I am with you on this. All the debate about user experience, proper tool for the job, etc. is interesting, but in what use case would it be valid to return any page higher than the actual Facebook login page for the query "facebook login"?

philcrissman 17y ago

Okay, if I follow you, you're saying that because people are trying to use Google (or, let's just say, "Search") for a purpose other than it was intended, it's the wrong solution. That's really not too different from what I wrote; except I'm saying: people should be _expected to recognize_ that they're using the wrong solution, and that they need a different solution. You seem to be suggesting that _Search_ should change something to suit the people who are using it "wrong". (Feel free to correct me on that.) It sounds like you're saying "Search should know what you _intend_ to look for, not just what you _typed into the search field_". I'm not sure I expect an algorithm to know our _intentions_. (Though Google's 'did you mean...' is clearly already trying to accomplish this, as much as possible.)

waterlesscloud 17y ago
I am pretty much saying that Google/Search should find what I intend to look for rather than its interpretation of what I type into the search field. Because that's clearly how the general public intends to use Google/Search. The only reason I don't use it that way is that I've learned to adapt to its shortcomings. I'm better than most at finding what I want using Google because I've learned to speak in Googlese, so to speak. How to frame my query in a way that returns what I want. I've adapted to the tool rather than the other way around. Clearly that's a bit much to expect of the masses, who are very often frustrated by Google/Search. I'm not running down the masses here. They want to get things done. We have very basic tools to help them, I'm arguing that our tools should be orders of magnitude more sophisticated. Sure it's hard, and while that response may be satisfying for engineers, that doesn't solve the problem people are trying to solve when they use Google/Search. And honestly, there's just something plain wrong with your algorithm when it returns a news story as a top result for "facebook login". It's a safe bet that is NOT the result 99.999% of the users are looking for when they type that in. And if you're failing your users a very high percentage of the time, the problem simply does not lie with your users.
- philcrissman 17y ago
  I honestly don't think I actually disagree with what you're saying; I just still don't see this as a "failure" on Google's part, and that was the impetus for the post. I don't think Google should have been expected to anticipate this sort of thing. Learn from it? Sure. Expect it? I still don't think so.
stingraycharles 17y ago
This whole discussion can be summed up with "know your audience". If you have stupid people in your audience, you should design for stupid people; companies like Facebook and Google should design for stupid people, the rest of the world doesn't. In the end, it's Google's responsibility to find the correct page for what it's users are looking for, even if they're using it as some sort of web-CLI for the wrong purpose. Google has the stupid people in its audience, so Google should design for them. Heck, Google should be able to detect a person's intentions; not sure if they can, but at least I guess it would be possible to classify websites as stupid and people as stupid, and match accordingly.
- epochwolf 17y ago
  Can you actually design for stupidity without making the experience painful for people of more average intelligence? Sidenote: Don't bring up geeks. Geeks are so far advanced on technological intelligence to be gods to the mere mortals around them.
HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
But they may not know of any other solution. I actually had a similar problem just an hour ago. I needed to look up the price of a piece of metalworking equipment. Since I had purchased items from Wholesale Tool in the past, I entered "www.wholesaletool.com" into Firefox. Then spent the next few minutes trying to figure out why my search for a 1-inch threading die wasn't turning up anything useful. It turns out that the site I really needed was www.wttool.com instead! And I'm a software dev who spends a lot of time on the web! How much longer would a non-expert have wasted before figuring this out? It's not necessarily anyone's fault; it's just that the web can be awfully confusing at times!
- brown9-2 17y ago
  For this to be a fair comparison you would have had to have been browsing a news article about wholesale tools and trying to purchase a tool from this news article. You mistook one wholesale tool store for another, whereas these users confused a news article about facebook's redesign for the place where you login to facebook.

iBercovich 17y ago

I agree. You build a tool to solve a problem, not for the building sake. And if it turns out the consumers are using your tool for a different purpose, it is in your own interest to understand this new use and optimize your tool to fulfill that previously unnoticed problem.

stcredzero 17y ago
if it turns out the consumers are using your tool for a different purpose, it is in your own interest to understand this new use and optimize your tool to fulfill that previously unnoticed problem. Amen! That last bit is quotable!
- seanos 17y ago
  I once read a story about a Chinese company who built washing machines and found that they were getting lots of warranty claims after people had broken them trying to wash potatoes. Instead of putting a notice on the machines not to use them to clean potatoes, they successfully developed and marketed a dual purpose machine. http://www.connectedaustralia.com/News/Trends/tabid/121/selectmoduleid/579/ArticleID/2694/reftab/121/Default.aspx http://www.connectedaustralia.com/News/Trends/tabid/121/sele...
  - iBercovich 17y ago
    That is exactly what I am talking about!
zaphar 17y ago
And yet to borrow from a commenter on the post. If you complain to a tool company about your hammer being a sucky screwdriver what exactly should the tool company to do? Make the hammer a better screwdriver? or point the user to the real screwdriver? Sometimes the solution isn't to optimize your tool for something it can't do very well but to build a new tool that does do it well. I think turning Google the search engine into a site redirection service for keywords ala AOL falls into that category.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

lmkg 17y ago

That depends on how you slice the phrase "intended to." Google is not supposed to return whatever Page Rank spits out, it's supposed to return the most relevant page to the user's query. Page Rank is a means to an end. If Page Rank is returning an article about facebook logins, rather than the facebook login, for the search query 'facebook login,' I would not consider it to be working as intended.

protomyth 17y ago
I am with you on this. All the debate about user experience, proper tool for the job, etc. is interesting, but in what use case would it be valid to return any page higher than the actual Facebook login page for the query "facebook login"?