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The way this journalist is using Google is so different from the way I use Google that I find it hard to understand what the problem is. Trying to think what I

The way this journalist is using Google is so different from the way I use Google that I find it hard to understand what the problem is. Trying to think what I googled recently. Let’s see... - what new pages have appeared about ReasonML over the past week - ditto for rxjs - any code samples of doing server-side rendering when using redux-observable? - any examples of applying functional javascript patterns to drawing on canvas? - what javascript conferences are planned for the coming year? - how is the phrase "the good wife" used in the books (searchable via Google Books)? is the title of the eponymous series an obvious allusion to some literary work? (haven’t fugured that one out, by the way) For all these searches, I was very happy with what the relevance of what Google found.

pavlov 9y ago
You use Google for very specific niche queries where you already know enough about the topic to judge the veracity and usefulness of the results. If someone makes a site that associates ReasonML with ISIS and Google surfaces that as the #2 result, you'll just laugh it off. The article is talking about people using Google for news and contested political topics. The extent of damage resulting from poor/misleading/fake results for the search "Texas church shooter" is much greater than for "ReasonML".
- azangru 9y ago
  > You use Google for very specific niche queries where you already know enough about the topic to judge the veracity and usefulness of the results. <...> The article is talking about people using Google for news and contested political topics. Yes indeed. Could it be that search engines are in principle ill suited for searching for news and contested political topics, especially if one has no way of judging whether a particular result is correct or not? Or, more generally, that searching without knowing how then to verify the quality of the results is a pretty silly undertaking? In other words, shouldn't all responsibility be on the user of a search engine, and not on the search engine itself?

pavlov 9y ago

You use Google for very specific niche queries where you already know enough about the topic to judge the veracity and usefulness of the results. If someone makes a site that associates ReasonML with ISIS and Google surfaces that as the #2 result, you'll just laugh it off. The article is talking about people using Google for news and contested political topics. The extent of damage resulting from poor/misleading/fake results for the search "Texas church shooter" is much greater than for "ReasonML".

azangru 9y ago
> You use Google for very specific niche queries where you already know enough about the topic to judge the veracity and usefulness of the results. <...> The article is talking about people using Google for news and contested political topics. Yes indeed. Could it be that search engines are in principle ill suited for searching for news and contested political topics, especially if one has no way of judging whether a particular result is correct or not? Or, more generally, that searching without knowing how then to verify the quality of the results is a pretty silly undertaking? In other words, shouldn't all responsibility be on the user of a search engine, and not on the search engine itself?