I get this too. Moreso, I think because I'm English and I spell things differently. Google, to its credit, has started to understand that English has more than one set of spellings. Prior to it having mappings, it could only go off its raw data (the web) and of the corner of the web that is English-speaking (amazingly to some people, nope, the web isn't mainly in English) the minority of that is British-English. I do respect companies that remember that we exist and I forgive those that don't.
As for searching for things with more than one meaning, I pretty much always know when it's going to be a problem and I give extra information. For Hole, for instance, I'd type Hole Court, knowing that Google would complete this as Hole Courtney Love, and then I'd search on that. I just checked it and Google does indeed do that.
Of course, that still leaves an ambiguity in that I could have been researching Courtney Love's vagina. Or anus. Or mouth. Or nostril...
Haha, why would people think the majority of the internet is English speaking? That's such a bizarre thing to think.
I almost always know to specify when I'm doing a Google search, but for some reason, I tend to just type in the names of things when I'm on Wikipedia. It's not like I don't grasp how Wikipedia works (in fact, I have over 1,000 edits). Sometimes my brain just refuses.
Nah, it's normal if you think about it. How often does Google return a page in Swahili? I can completely understand people in English-speaking countries thinking the internet is in English. Actually, more to the point, I often see people on the internet saying that it is America. Umm, no it's not. It's the internet.
And don't get me started on a rant about Wikipedia. I can go on all day about that one. :P
There's a bizarre sort of patriotism here that relies on being wildly misinformed about other countries, or, if the damage has already been done and you can't forget what you've learned, at least pretending to be. This glorified ignorance is encouraged in children alarmingly often. As a kid (and even as a teenager), I remember being told by various teachers that the US is the only "free country" in the world, and that other countries don't have things like freedom of speech or trials. I remember realising that wasn't true as a child and being really angry about having been told that.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, and some of the articles are too US-centric, for sure. It's always getting better, though. Yes, you have to check the sources if you're going to rely on information from Wikipedia. Guess what? You should be doing that anyway. Being published or written by a professional doesn't make something true. I have a book about nutrition and weight by a woman with a PhD, and when I checked the citations, I found that her application of studies was questionable at best, and some of the sources cited didn't even contain anything about the points that the citations were attached to. I've never seen a single book of facts (those ones with titles like 1001 Interesting Facts and shit like that) that didn't have a great many things that are just outright false, like "Humans only use 10% of our brains" and "Celery has negative calories". As long as you stay reasonably sceptical and double check dubious claims like a goddamn adult, you should be ok.
Do you have trouble typing in Google?
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I get this too. Moreso, I think because I'm English and I spell things differently. Google, to its credit, has started to understand that English has more than one set of spellings. Prior to it having mappings, it could only go off its raw data (the web) and of the corner of the web that is English-speaking (amazingly to some people, nope, the web isn't mainly in English) the minority of that is British-English. I do respect companies that remember that we exist and I forgive those that don't.
As for searching for things with more than one meaning, I pretty much always know when it's going to be a problem and I give extra information. For Hole, for instance, I'd type Hole Court, knowing that Google would complete this as Hole Courtney Love, and then I'd search on that. I just checked it and Google does indeed do that.
Of course, that still leaves an ambiguity in that I could have been researching Courtney Love's vagina. Or anus. Or mouth. Or nostril...
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VioletTrees
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Haha, why would people think the majority of the internet is English speaking? That's such a bizarre thing to think.
I almost always know to specify when I'm doing a Google search, but for some reason, I tend to just type in the names of things when I'm on Wikipedia. It's not like I don't grasp how Wikipedia works (in fact, I have over 1,000 edits). Sometimes my brain just refuses.
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dappled
11 years ago
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Nah, it's normal if you think about it. How often does Google return a page in Swahili? I can completely understand people in English-speaking countries thinking the internet is in English. Actually, more to the point, I often see people on the internet saying that it is America. Umm, no it's not. It's the internet.
And don't get me started on a rant about Wikipedia. I can go on all day about that one. :P
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VioletTrees
11 years ago
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There's a bizarre sort of patriotism here that relies on being wildly misinformed about other countries, or, if the damage has already been done and you can't forget what you've learned, at least pretending to be. This glorified ignorance is encouraged in children alarmingly often. As a kid (and even as a teenager), I remember being told by various teachers that the US is the only "free country" in the world, and that other countries don't have things like freedom of speech or trials. I remember realising that wasn't true as a child and being really angry about having been told that.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, and some of the articles are too US-centric, for sure. It's always getting better, though. Yes, you have to check the sources if you're going to rely on information from Wikipedia. Guess what? You should be doing that anyway. Being published or written by a professional doesn't make something true. I have a book about nutrition and weight by a woman with a PhD, and when I checked the citations, I found that her application of studies was questionable at best, and some of the sources cited didn't even contain anything about the points that the citations were attached to. I've never seen a single book of facts (those ones with titles like 1001 Interesting Facts and shit like that) that didn't have a great many things that are just outright false, like "Humans only use 10% of our brains" and "Celery has negative calories". As long as you stay reasonably sceptical and double check dubious claims like a goddamn adult, you should be ok.