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Comment by thurn | Hacker News Reader

When I search for "Eclipse Java", I want results about the IDE. When my girlfriend searches, she's probably interested in Twilight-themed coffee or something. That's what personalization is all about.

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And if you usually search for programming languages, but this time want to understand what your 13-year-old cousin keeps blabbing about? Suddenly it all falls apart and everything about the whole process seems murky and over-complex.

In my experience, for overloaded terms, the less pertinent one tends to pop up near the bottom of the front page. For example, when I search for "Python" the sixth result is about snakes.

Open an incognito tab. Done.

The idea is that ambiguous search queries would default to the meanings related to your normal search behavior, and if on a particular occasion you discover Google resolves the ambiguity incorrectly, you could make your query more precise. In the above scenario, you could search for `java eclipse stephenie meyer' and your 13-year-old cousin could search for `java eclipse ide'.

Maybe there should be an advanced search option like that ...

    twilight java pov:"thirteen year old girl"

Joking aside, there are probably other ways of clarifying that if you know what you are doing (e.g. add 'vampire' to the terms).

That might get you an IDE plugin for working with Java VAMPIRE tools for Bayesian statistical analysis of gene expression array data.

...and that level of personalization requires that Google collects a lot of personal data about you. Happy to make the trade-off?

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