3 ms·

I hope it's not controversial to say that if your ambitions are to be the whole world's middle man on something, you have some responsibilities regarding how to

I hope it's not controversial to say that if your ambitions are to be the whole world's middle man on something, you have some responsibilities regarding how to do it. Google doesn't have a "hey, these are scraped and only have like 80% accuracy" disclaimer or anything like that when they direct customers to businesses. I don't know where the line is but Google has some level of basic ethical requirement to not try to be the middleman when their failures (or in google terms >80% accuracy) cost others rather than themselves. It's presented as correct, not as a best guess. I get that it's impossible to be 100% correct at this scale, but then just don't present it as authoritative. Or let people correct mistakes that are harming them. Or something besides just driving traffic to their own product and saying there's nothing they could do.

izacus 6y ago
Is there ANY company that will do that? Can you sue the yellow pages if they're wrong? Or a wrong map? Or even your own projects - are you willing to put your money and perhaps even criminal record on the line if your company sells data that's not accurate for a percentage of customers?
- callmeal 6y ago
  >Can you sue the yellow pages if they're wrong? Or a wrong map? Yup. You can also win. https://www.pmmag.com/articles/84301-oops-the-yellow-pages-blew-my-ad https://www.pmmag.com/articles/84301-oops-the-yellow-pages-b... >>A Pennsylvania caterer had an outdated phone number placed in his ad. The phone number, used briefly in the past, had been assigned to someone else. The result: The caterer lost a ton of money and eventually filed for bankruptcy. He sued the phone company for negligently listing the wrong number. The jury awarded him $200,000.
- mthoms 6y ago
  I don't get this comment. The parent said nothing about suing anybody.... let alone committing crimes(!?). They spoke of ethics. If Google posts information to the web[0], and that information can harm my business, don't you think the ethical thing to do would be to provide some sort of avenue for correcting it? This isn't some scrappy startup. It's one of the worlds biggest and richest companies. [0] I'm not talking about search results here, where someone else posts false information. That's a whole other ball-o-wax.

izacus 6y ago

Is there ANY company that will do that? Can you sue the yellow pages if they're wrong? Or a wrong map? Or even your own projects - are you willing to put your money and perhaps even criminal record on the line if your company sells data that's not accurate for a percentage of customers?

callmeal 6y ago
>Can you sue the yellow pages if they're wrong? Or a wrong map? Yup. You can also win. https://www.pmmag.com/articles/84301-oops-the-yellow-pages-blew-my-ad https://www.pmmag.com/articles/84301-oops-the-yellow-pages-b... >>A Pennsylvania caterer had an outdated phone number placed in his ad. The phone number, used briefly in the past, had been assigned to someone else. The result: The caterer lost a ton of money and eventually filed for bankruptcy. He sued the phone company for negligently listing the wrong number. The jury awarded him $200,000.
mthoms 6y ago
I don't get this comment. The parent said nothing about suing anybody.... let alone committing crimes(!?). They spoke of ethics. If Google posts information to the web[0], and that information can harm my business, don't you think the ethical thing to do would be to provide some sort of avenue for correcting it? This isn't some scrappy startup. It's one of the worlds biggest and richest companies. [0] I'm not talking about search results here, where someone else posts false information. That's a whole other ball-o-wax.