My war with google

[ritaxis]

I do a lot of searches in an ordinary day. So I naturally have a lot of o[pinions about google.

This thing that google does -- where they highjack your search and replace it with something they thing you ought to be searching for instead but you're too stupid to have typed it correctly -- it bugs me no end. I've decided to complain every single time they do it, each time pointing out that I do, in fact, know what I am looking for.

I don't mind the suggestion "did you mean . . .?" it's the outright refusal to search what I asked for that pisses me off.

I've also decided not to take the aggressively misleading keyword practices of websites lying down anymore. Today I complained when a search for "vintage mothers day postcard" turned up an image of a woman crying over the body of a man whose head had been blown off. That is not a vintage mothers day postcard. ("mothers day" merited a mere "did you mean mother's day? rather than a highjack, by the way, while "googie motif" -- as in googie designs -- merited a highjack) And when the first hundred or so images for "Mexican Independence Day" returned mostly images for the fourth of July and a handful of racist jokes from the e-cards people, I sent feedback on that too. It's not that I expect a search engine to return none of those images. I just expect the first hundred images to be more accurate than that. If I say Mexican, I expect the results to be at least remotely exican. And you know? Images of the Alamo are not a good substitute. I understand why they would end up there (if the website has a narrative that includes both the Alamo and the Grito, which would be a reasonable thing to happen). But again, not all up in my first hundred instead of something to do with Sept.16 and the Grito, or May 5 and the mariachis and stuff.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I haven't used Garble Search in years. It's censored, among other things.

Ever tried Bing? I get along with it.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Bing doesn't get me results, last I tried.

I could have used a bit of censoring with that head blown off image.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Oh, they'd leave that in. It screws people up. I'm talking about stuff you either have to know already and really dig for, or just can't find at all, like Castro's attendance at Harvard-- which has apparently been redacted by Harvard too, despite the big deal they made out of it when he visited us.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

My current gripe with Google is their determination to assimilate everything you do under one user name and profile. Thankfully they've backed down on the merger between Youtube and Google+ because that was causing annoyance to lots of people. I can sort of understand why they did it, but having comments someone has made on a Youtube video appearing in my G+ stream is not helpful. Also, I'm prepared to be upfront about my real name on G+ and post accordingly, but I'd rather remain more anonymous regarding the videos I post, which are mostly things I've done to include in LiveJournal posts.

ETA: Google also keeps trying to get me to create a Gmail account to link with Google+ (I currently log in with the email address I've had for donkey's years). I do not need or want an new email address, thank you very much. I am perfectly happy with the ones I have.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Oh dear lord yes, the gmail linkage is why I'm dragging my feet on G+.

I've not used Wolfram Alpha's search engine of late, but I may start doing it. I only use Google at work; otherwise I use Bing.

[redbird]

Have you tried duckduckgo? They don't find everything that google would, and I'm still using google for image searches and maps, but it often tells me what I need and is less annoying, plus isn't trying to take over the world.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Most of these are image searches, so no.