A few months ago I questioned Dan Ariely’s belief that Google is the voice of the people by reporting the following bizarre options that Google gave to complete the simplest search I could think of:
Several commenters gave informed discussions about what was going on in Google’s program.
Maybe things are better now, though? The latest version seems much more reasonable:
(Aleks sent this to me, then I checked on my own computer and got the same thing.)
Really funny. You know that Fernanda Viegas (from Many Eyes) get some fun out of that too (with google users in Brazil).
http://urbandemographics.blogspot.com/2010/07/man…
check at minute 13:50. (with subtitles)
My increasing impression is that employees at Google uses their power to screw around in ways that amuse themselves.
Any sufficiently advanced computer program is indistinguishable from a tangled mess.
It is really strange indeed. One of the things a friend of mine made me notice is that when looking up for the name of a french celebrity in any field, and in particular in media / journalism, very often a suggestion appears with the word "juif" (jewish) associated to the name – even when it's really unlikely that he is !
I've been getting different results even on Google France, but I also checked out the "pourquoi" suggestions for google in different countries. In google.de one of the suggestions that stood out was "pourquoi israel." I do not get the equivalent on google.de when I type "why" or "warum" What could this mean?