Sunday, September 16, 2018
Why you can't avoid Google
I was trying to find something halfway reliable about the mysterious closure of the NM Sunspot observatory. I prefer to avoid Google, so I tried news.bing.com.
NOTHING about the observatory, NOTHING about sunspots. Scrolled down at least 300 items, and it's all varied and miscellaneous stuff about Baltimore. The Baltimore sport teams, local Baltimore politics, Baltimore real estate, Baltimore weddings....
What does Baltimore have to do with sunspots, and why don't sunspots have any connection with sunspots?
Oh. The Baltimore newspaper is the Sun. Bing thinks you want to see stuff from the Baltimore Sun when you type sunspot.
Google knows what you mean. The first few scrollpages are on the observatory story, plus a variety of other scientific items about actual sunspots. Nothing about Baltimore.
This is why Google wins, whether you WANT to use it or not. The alternatives are perfectly useless.
"Conservatives" keep talking about the need for alternatives to FB and Google and Twitter, but they haven't done anything meaningful. As always in partisan politics, maintaining the talking point is all that counts. Actual solutions are unthinkable.
¶ 9:14 AM 
