4 ms·
It's bullshit because search is filtering and the filtering done by search is being exaggerated by those who peddle this bullshit.
by yanw 15y ago
It's bullshit because search is filtering and the filtering done by search is being exaggerated by those who peddle this bullshit.
- qjz 15y agoI expect my search to be faithful to the terms I enter. If the results aren't satisfactory, I'll narrow the search with additional terms. Withholding information based on some guess at my political leanings is dishonest. I'd be appalled if a librarian did it; why should I expect less from a search engine?
- yanw 15y agoThe 'political leaning results' are just a tool the author used to try to explained his (ill-informed) point, there are no evidence to any such degree of personalization specially not to any 'bubble' inducing extent, it's all very sensationalistic. And for the record the political example was about facebook wall.
- Uchikoma 15y agoWhat does faithful mean? You want German or Chinese results? You want global or local results (in your language of choice). There is always personalization in search.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoIf you went to a librarian and said "show me Egypt", she would have nowhere to start. A conversation would then ensue about what you are interested in. Keep going to the library, keep having those conversations, and eventually, the librarian will take you straight to the books you want when you ask for Norway. If you want something different, you'll have to explicitly ask. What Google is doing is no different. It just happens to have a lot more conversations with you.
- dhimes 15y agoWhat Google is doing is no different only if you can, in your ensuing "conversations," correct a misinterpretation that may have happened somewhere along the way. If your ability to do that is hampered because the only way to do it is by clicking on something, you don't see the thing to click on which will do this, then the filtering is not helping (and actually works against Google's and my mutual interests).
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoIn theory, there are two types of corrections, one is blatant, the other is subtle: - You blatantly correct the conversation by adding additional text to the search: "norway government" versus "norway travel". - You subtly correct the conversation over time with more government queries/clicks/likes or more travel queries/clicks/likes. Listening to Matt Cutt's response, it sounds like all of these signals are pretty minor anyway.
- dhimes 15y agoNot sure where you are going with your dichotomy- if you are unable to correct in either case (because you don't get the option of clicking on a correct answer) then it fails. I suppose with enough perseverance you could trick the search engine into showing you what you want- if you know it exists in the first place- but then, (1) just enter the very specific term to start with, and (2) this defeats the attempts to become more relevant. I agree with you that these seem to be small changes. So far.
- chc 15y agoThat's a good point, but I think it kind of misses the forest for the trees. It's true that personalization might sometimes lead Google to mistakenly show you less relevant results, but it seems pretty certain that the opposite would also be true — a generic page will sometimes show less relevant results than a personalized one. One search result is going to be shown ahead of another either way. If showing a less relevant result ahead of a more relevant one is considered "hampering," I don't see any reason this "hampering" is unique to personalized search.