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> But it turns out that we don't really care: we care that google.com is google.com, and that's it. It's worse than that. 9/10 users I observe 'google'* google

> But it turns out that we don't really care: we care that google.com is google.com, and that's it. It's worse than that. 9/10 users I observe 'google'* google in order to run a google search. Every single time they go to a website that isn't saved as a bookmark, they search for it instead of typing an address into the address bar. I used to be surprised seeing people google 'gmail' and then click the top ad every morning... But I don't blame the users as much anymore. The companies that makes the browsers and web search know all this too and the UI has actually evolved to further muddy the difference between search and address. (Increasingly they bing it due to MS defaults in Win 10.) But your overall point is well taken and very true: having the sears.com domain name might not be as important as having the top google hit for 'sears'.

Jtsummers 9y ago
I used to be like that with real world directions. Constantly referencing maps, people, or (later) smart phone maps. Then I started forcing myself to develop an internal model of the regions I was traveling in, now I only use the smart phone map for ETA and traffic information. I think most people never really develop that mental model of how the internet is laid out. I would get lost going from A->C or C->A. But I could go A->Town Center->C no problem (and the reverse) but it took twice as long because I was taking a suboptimal route. Everyone knows where Google is, it's the town center of the internet (for them), like the portal sites that MSN, Yahoo!, and others provide. So they go there and use it to make their way to their desired destination.
- hobs 9y ago
  This is really apt, people who are not adepts choose reliable routes to success over potentially faster ones, and often reject your "better way" because it requires some subtlety in their mental model or an exception to a rule that didn't already exist.
- Jach 9y ago
  I turned into the opposite for real world directions. I let google tell me where to go, only rarely deciding a different route on my own. And sometimes that's not exactly a fully formed different route but I want to go via a certain way (e.g. non-freeway) and hope google updates the rest of its directions to accord to that wish. It's taken me on some weird paths but whatever. My excuse is that I grew up in Utah, which has a fairly consistent and ordered grid system with addresses almost always mapping to grid coordinates, so given an address you don't need any special directions. You might still go to a main road because it's faster, but you could instead optimize the Manhattan distance without effort. Traveling elsewhere with places so fond of nonsensical street names and non-grids, I gave up actively building a mental model (I have an ok spatial model of my surrounding area in Bellevue/Redmond but I've been here almost a decade...I have no idea where most of the street names in Seattle proper fall and haven't bothered to learn any of the mnemonics people have suggested) and let the machine tell me what to do.

Jtsummers 9y ago

I used to be like that with real world directions. Constantly referencing maps, people, or (later) smart phone maps. Then I started forcing myself to develop an internal model of the regions I was traveling in, now I only use the smart phone map for ETA and traffic information. I think most people never really develop that mental model of how the internet is laid out. I would get lost going from A->C or C->A. But I could go A->Town Center->C no problem (and the reverse) but it took twice as long because I was taking a suboptimal route. Everyone knows where Google is, it's the town center of the internet (for them), like the portal sites that MSN, Yahoo!, and others provide. So they go there and use it to make their way to their desired destination.

hobs 9y ago
This is really apt, people who are not adepts choose reliable routes to success over potentially faster ones, and often reject your "better way" because it requires some subtlety in their mental model or an exception to a rule that didn't already exist.
Jach 9y ago
I turned into the opposite for real world directions. I let google tell me where to go, only rarely deciding a different route on my own. And sometimes that's not exactly a fully formed different route but I want to go via a certain way (e.g. non-freeway) and hope google updates the rest of its directions to accord to that wish. It's taken me on some weird paths but whatever. My excuse is that I grew up in Utah, which has a fairly consistent and ordered grid system with addresses almost always mapping to grid coordinates, so given an address you don't need any special directions. You might still go to a main road because it's faster, but you could instead optimize the Manhattan distance without effort. Traveling elsewhere with places so fond of nonsensical street names and non-grids, I gave up actively building a mental model (I have an ok spatial model of my surrounding area in Bellevue/Redmond but I've been here almost a decade...I have no idea where most of the street names in Seattle proper fall and haven't bothered to learn any of the mnemonics people have suggested) and let the machine tell me what to do.