Halfway down that piece: A study this year by Stone Temple, a prominent analyst of the industry, showed Google’s search engine answered 74.3% of 5,000 questions, and on those answers it had a 97.4% accuracy rate. Both percentages are higher than services from Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Alternative WSJ: Let's bury that tidbit under the fold while we nitpick and highlight edge cases in a constantly…
97% accuracy is abysmal for something you are presenting as "answers".
Not sure what the margin of error is on these things, but generally 97% should probably be considered 100%.
Single answers is basically what's needed for Alex, Google Home, etc. I was surprised that Google beat Alexa. Siri was horrible. I haven't purchased a home voice device yet because I wanted it to get a little better. However, I'm not sure if there will be much improvement in the device itself. The real work is on the server.
Surprised Google beat Alexa? I have had the Echo since late 2014 and now several Google Homes. For understanding you and answering questions Google is well ahead of Amazon. But you find this surprising? This is what Google does and has for almost 20 years now.
I think people who have always used iphones seriously underestimate how good google has become at this.
I'm generally very critical of Google, especially the search results page, but it's important to remember the background context to this article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/16/rupert-murdoch... >Rupert Murdoch say News Corp is not looking to expand its newspaper empire, conceding digital advertising “has been tremendously damaging to print” and some of his papers were struggling. Over the next few yea…
The NYTimes and Guardian have been as aggressive in attacking Google and Facebook as anyone (subjectively I would say more so) so I don't think this is just right-wing. It is more like the entire world has realized that having these monopolies control the flow of information is incredibly dangerous.
From a very crass and cynical perspective, but probably accurate, as Google and Facebook become more powerful, they can and should expect opposition from all previously entrenched power centers. It would be a very, ah, Silicon Valley utopian nerd idea, for lack of a better phrase, that it could otherwise. And even if there are some ideological lines drawn, well, even people on the "same side" still jockey for position and work at cross-purposes at times. If Google and Facebook are agreed to skew left, yeah, you can probably expect a bit more vigor in the right side attacks if only because they have more operating space, but you can still expect plenty of left-wing "jockeying", and that the latter may even have a greater effect over time. (Could go either way, assuming you can even agree on a basis for measurement.)
I'm generally very critical of Google, especially the search results page, but it's important to remember the background context to this article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/16/rupert-murdoch... >Rupert Murdoch say News Corp is not looking to expand its newspaper empire, conceding digital advertising “has been tremendously damaging to print” and some of his papers were struggling. Over the next few yea…
You are unjustifiably attacking conservative politics.
97% accuracy is abysmal for something you are presenting as "answers".
Not sure what the margin of error is on these things, but generally 97% should probably be considered 100%.
There's no margin of error for the test they did, just potential sampling bias.
Given the 5000 questions they asked, the system will provide the wrong answer 2.6% of the time. Every time, until they improve it. There's a chance that they managed to ask the only 150 questions that it doesn't know the answer to, but not a very big one.
My favorite example is "are lemons acidic?" It's full of "alkaline diet" sites trying to SEO itself into convincing people that lemons are good for you because they're an alkaline. It's become a little less inaccurate over the years but is still dodgy. Then again the answers are so consistent and I'm so used to trusting the first page of Google that I'm almost convinced that lemons alkalinize your body.
I'm not even sure Google's behaviour is wrong in this instance. The kind of person who would google something as obvious as that is probably actually more interested in the woo-answer, and I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job).
To illustrate with another example, if I ask Google where the government is hiding the aliens, I'm probably more interested in the answer "Area 51" than "the government isn't hiding any aliens".
My favorite example is "are lemons acidic?" It's full of "alkaline diet" sites trying to SEO itself into convincing people that lemons are good for you because they're an alkaline. It's become a little less inaccurate over the years but is still dodgy. Then again the answers are so consistent and I'm so used to trusting the first page of Google that I'm almost convinced that lemons alkalinize your body.
I'm not even sure Google's behaviour is wrong in this instance. The kind of person who would google something as obvious as that is probably actually more interested in the woo-answer, and I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job). To illustrate with another example, if I ask Google where the government is hiding t…
> I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job).
Aside from my general disagreement with your statement, wouldn't that actually be pretty bad for business? If I'm looking for a factual answer about something, and Google continually gives me garbage, I'll just stop using Google.
I'm not even sure Google's behaviour is wrong in this instance. The kind of person who would google something as obvious as that is probably actually more interested in the woo-answer, and I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job). To illustrate with another example, if I ask Google where the government is hiding t…
> I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job). Aside from my general disagreement with your statement, wouldn't that actually be pretty bad for business? If I'm looking for a factual answer about something, and Google continually gives me garbage, I'll just stop using Google.
Google isn't limited to factual information, in fact most content on the internet is not 'factual'