nludd

If you're interested in cartographic information that can't be readily put into words, maybe a text-based search engine isn't the best way to find it. A map makes more sense. Query a map (like Google Maps or OpenStreetMap) for "pizza [exact location]".

We've been so conditioned to use Google Search as our one stop oracle that we fail to stop and think whether a text-based query is actually appropriate.

You must be misinterpreting me. I mean "takeaway pizza [location in or near which you want to get your pizza]".

>There might be a Dutch programming blog talking about this error message, but they'll never be able to be discovered because any English source will end up on top.

Add "lang:nl".

>Another example: you are traveling in a foreign country, and don't really know the local language. You Google for information about a restaurant, hoping to land on something Trip Advisor-y. You end up on the local website, that you're completely unfamiliar with.

Look up the restaurant on https://www.tripadvisor.com/. Why would you use a general purpose search engine if you already know where to find the right information? Or you could add "lang:en" to your query.

>You want to offer a blog for English-speaking expats in Paris. Your exposure in Google is really low because of the niche audience, and the fact that French sources about places you're talking about will be much more viewed.

Those expats could add "lang:en" to their queries about the places you have blogged about.

I am not denying that there is some value in Google filling in these blanks for you, but 99% of examples about the indispensability of personalized search are rendered moot with very simple additions to the search query.

Maybe we, as technologists that are well positioned to think about the effects our technologies have on their users, should consider whether those effects are of net benefit to them or not.

The short-term consequence of using cocaine is euphoria, but we do not encourage cocaine use because for most users the long-term negative consequences vastly outweigh the short term benefits.

Likewise, we may want to consider what the long-term consequences of relieving our users of certain cognitive labors are. If we will guess for them what information they want, if we tell them what to read, if we tell them what news is fake, if we decide for them what they might like, are we empowering them to make their own choices, or are we increasingly (whether intentionally or unintentionally) directing their lives?

I'm Dutch, so I have to switch languages often as well. I don't think I get what you're trying to explain. Could you provide some examples?

If I search for an English error message, I.. search for that message. If I search for a Dutch person, I look him up on the Dutch Wikipedia if he's well-known enough.

This. My mother used to teach classes in primary school how to use the computer and the internet, but appears to have forgotten most of this when browser user interfaces started prioritizing Google search. Now it's hard to get her to navigate to a URL and (even using Google) she struggles to find the information she needs because she's not used to accurate queries anymore.

I get the value proposition of Google Search, just like I get the value proposition of Velcro shoes and microwave dinners. The problem is not with the face value of these technologies, but with their assumptions and implications. In spite of Silicon Valley rhetoric, these technologies do not empower and liberate their users but make them dependent on them. The more you outsource your thinking to algorithms, the more vulnerable you are to being controlled by them.

>If I search for "takeaway pizza", I'm going to be pretty annoyed if the results are generated using PageRank alone, with no weighting for local relevance.

Google "takeaway pizza [place of residence]".

>If an American searches for "cricket", they almost certainly mean the cellular provider or the insect rather than the sport

Google "cricket provider" or "cricket insect".

>if a British person makes the same search, the odds are reversed.

Google "cricket sport".

"We will track your every query, movement, voice command, and whatever other behavioural data we can get our hands on, put it in a gargantuan centralized database, store it for as long as we can (practically forever) and have trillion-dollar artificial intelligence munch on it so you can avoid using accurate search queries" is a ridiculous value proposition.