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Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

wsj.com

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Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#3
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 years it will be interesting to see how successful the right wing anglosphere press is at getting governments to regulate Google. It's been building for a while now and not just from the Murdoch press. The Daily Mail in the UK has been campaigning against Google for a number of years now.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#7
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.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#8
I looked at a search result today and there were ads at the top, a few answers in the middle, and more ads on the bottom of the first page. Once Google has to start paying all the ISPs their net neutrality blood money, I imagine a single result in a sea of ads will be the norm.

Re: Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions

#9
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 improving system.

We should also emphasising how integral google's search is to the health of society and civilization because we are mandated by management and ownership to produce anti-google PR and provide a steady supply of ammunition to its critics.

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