Category Archives: ethics and philosophy

Google “did you mean” problem

- simone
2

Semantic is not an option. I don’t care what is searching the majority of Google users, you cannot suggest a different meaning for my search, it’s simply wrong, it seems that you Google are trying to modify my need to know something, with something else you would like me to know. Please stop.

Some days ago Christians defended Muslims during their prayers from the attack of police, here’s the video, and here some pictures.

Last year I was imagining this could happen, I hope this gets fixed as soon as possible. (I took this screenshot today February 7th, 2011 on Google.it)

*update: March 2011 – Fixed! Thanks Google

Facebook Global word censorship

- simone
Reply

With 500 million users do you have some kind of free speech responsibility paper? Why a single word is forbidden for 500 million mouths? Do you have some kind of intelligent spam/bad word/malware filter? Do you ban me because I have already been marked as a spammer by my friends or you just make impossible to say something for all of us? The filter is working only for single words or you have some kind of semantic filter that censors certain meanings?

One thing is certain this message could not be posted on Facebook, because i just wrote Goatse.cx at the end of it. Okay? You do not agree? No problem, just hit Okay and shut up.

Ah, do I have to ask for a permission?

Extended “did you mean…?” or What is wrong to know, Google?

- simone
1

Google, how will you avoid unintentional censorship?

Imagine a search engine capable to predict the real meaning of user’s queries beyond their knowledge gaps, we are not that far.

The spelling auto correction tools could be extended to let users know something that everyone else already knows, beyond the present knowledge of single users.

A search engine used as a knowledge tool, is still a search engine? Can we search something we did not imagine that exist? Google already proved that we can search for something we don’t even know the correct name yet. How deep can you go, Google?

I feel like an elastic rubber band, between my ideas of a free knowledge market and customer’s will to do some business together. Google seems to experience a similar (not yet painful) division between what Google can give for free and its ads.

This month I got more conversions from Facebook Ads than from AdWords. Maybe I’m just a poor marketer, but maybe something is changing.

Update: Maybe a lot of little numbers will give us some answers, just like a lot of lines can draw something similar to a circle, we just have to remember that approximation of reality is not reality, and approximation may change the perception itself of reality (if reality exists, of course).

At the moment the search feature is available with the operator *.
See the full list of Google Features here.

Update: it happened to me on february 7th 2011

Update: apparently i was not the only one concerned about it :-)

Update: but i still want an index history