Google is messing with my reality and that is simply unacceptable. A while back I noticed that, more and more often, my searches were returning a lot of junk that was unrelated to what I was looking for. I have concluded that Google thinks I’m an infant. Or a moron.
I google some weird stuff because I’m a translator. I’ll spare you the explanation. The other day, I googled the words narrow area reality and Google, in its infinite wisdom, didn’t bother to ask me Did you mean realty, it just gave me a bunch of crap having to do with real estate. The first instance of the three terms I had typed didn’t appear till three results down the page.
Google consistently pollutes my search results and abuses my mental bandwidth because it thinks it’s smarter than I am, and I resent it in a major way.
The Did you mean… option is essential. Just making the decision for you without providing that option sucks. And I can’t figure out why sometimes Google asks the question and sometimes it doesn’t. Do you know?
Not long ago, Google even refused to return results for a word it didn’t like, an obscure French word I was trying to find a picture of for a translation I was working on. Google just corrected my spelling to some English word that came somewhat close because obviously I was too stupid to know what I was typing.
I had to go into my preferences and change the search to the French web. Because Google constantly and randomly resets my preferences. I use Google Images a lot when I translate, sometimes as a dictionary supplement, sometimes as a replacement. And I also need equal access to French and English web content. Duh.
I’ve never paid much attention when I see an article go by in my RSS feed about Google’s latest algorithm “improvement.” But I think I’m going to have to start. And I’m thinking of switching search engines too. Any suggestions?
Posted on May 12, 2009
0