I never stated that Google isn't the best search engine out there. I stated that I hoped the natural language learning from Duplex would filter down to the Google search engine.
But while we're on the topic, find a search query in which Google will return a list of movie reviewers in the city of Chicago. It can't. It is so focused on second-guessing search queries that it will only return lists of reviews of the film Chicago.
I had this exact very frustrating experience once trying to find the name of a woman I met who publishes a popular movie review blog in Chicago. There's even a "guild" of sorts of movie reviewers in Chicago, but Google could only surface that as high as the 10th page of results.
I know I'm not the only person frustrated with Google's desire to second-guess my searches because I heard a comedian on the radio last week who did a bit that lasted five whole minutes on Google second-guessing searches.
Kind of tangential to this, but I was really amazed at the accuracy of Google's search results when a few years back I tried to find the name of a song I'd heard at a nightclub in Hong Kong. Neither did I know the artist, nor really any part of the lyrics (because it had been very loud and crowded), so I was pleasantly suprised when Google Search took my query "guys in jean overalls singing too ra loo ra loo" and actually returned "Come on Eileen".
I feel that we have such a high standard for google search result quality that we can get frustrated by such highly specific search result edge cases. Google search is not perfect, but its the best search engine out there by a long margin for almost 20 years.
There will be a subset of users who will bemoan user privacy but expect highly specific personally tailored quality search result. You can't have both and there will always be edge cases in such a difficult domain. The fact that so many industry heavyweights can't compete with Google in search result quality, says a lot about how good Google is. Does it has problems? Yes, no one is denying it.
But with Google, there is no pure search for "Chicago."
There is only a search for "Chicago" by someone at a particular location with a particular device using a particular browser with a particular search history with a particular number of other parameters that Google's pieced together that we don't even know about.
So, I'll be more specific: Every Google search is an edge case. Google spends billions making sure no two searches return identical results.
I never stated that Google isn't the best search engine out there. I stated that I hoped the natural language learning from Duplex would filter down to the Google search engine.
But while we're on the topic, find a search query in which Google will return a list of movie reviewers in the city of Chicago. It can't. It is so focused on second-guessing search queries that it will only return lists of reviews of the film Chicago.
I had this exact very frustrating experience once trying to find the name of a woman I met who publishes a popular movie review blog in Chicago. There's even a "guild" of sorts of movie reviewers in Chicago, but Google could only surface that as high as the 10th page of results.
I know I'm not the only person frustrated with Google's desire to second-guess my searches because I heard a comedian on the radio last week who did a bit that lasted five whole minutes on Google second-guessing searches.