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Comment by maltalex | Hacker News Reader

So Google uses a data source that uses euros per month as a metric (probably [0]), so what?

There's clearly room for improvement here, but come on - taking taxes into account? Showing only the current wage? Those are oddly specific requirements. Who should the taxes be calculated for? A single man? A family of four? A single parent?

Showing the historic wage as it compares to other countries is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. What Google does here is very far from being dangerously misleading.

[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

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Since the minimum wage in the UK is a thing that is set by law, defined as an amount in Sterling per hour, before tax (although at that pay level tax would be irrelevant anyway), that's the only valid response.

> So Google uses a data source that uses euros per month as a metric (probably [0]), so what?

What is the intent of a user making a search for "minimum wage uk"? If they searched for "historic minimum wage", or "compare minimum wage" - sure, that graph is appropriate.

What I'm saying is that for someone searching for the UK's rate, there is only one correct answer. This is the rate mandated by the Government for your age.

The author didn't describe this as "dangerously misleading"—that was when Google took the list of "what not to do during a seizure", and provided them as instructions on what to do instead. The minimum wage graph was described as "it's merely annoying."

In fairness, it appears they're only mentioning taxes in the context of comparing to other countries' minimum wage - if Google wasn't displaying the other countries minimum wages, there'd be no reason to factor in taxes for a fair comparison.

The seizure example is a nice example of where this feature is misleading. But overall, I have come to not trust it at all. I find it is flat out wrong more often than not. A feature like that is pretty much useless.

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