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Danny Bassette
Danny Bassette
Join Date 02/2003
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EG

Evil is google, I mean, google is evil

June 8, 2005 10:34:17 AM from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
       I'm sure some of you have noticed the phenomenon that is search engines, with google seeming to be the most common. With 'googled' being a word used offline it's gotten around, that's for sure. You can put just about anything into the nice search box and get results. Sometimes this is good, when you find what your looking for or other useful bits of information. Other times you'll find complete junk, which is bad. I'll go so far as to say it's evil.
       Why evil? Because you can find my stuff there. How is that bad? Well it isn't, exactly. I know I'm not anonymous on the internet, that's not the problem. Anonymity only exists so long as no one cares enough to find out who you are, assuming your online of course. You could throw the modem out the window and burn your network card, then your anonymous on the internet. The problem with finding my stuff on google is with what it shows up for. If you searched for "Danny Bassette" you had better find stuff on me (and look at that, you do ). But if you search for say, apiphobia, why am I listed there? Sure, I wrote an article titled that, but I am confident there are many better pages out there. Yet there my article is, number eight on the google list (at least at the time I'm writing this, who knows about when your reading it).
       So in conclusion, google is good because it can help you find all sorts of stuff. I use it all the time even. But it's evil, because it finds stuff that doesn't really fit. Course, I'll keep using it until something better comes along...
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Danny Bassette
Dr Guy
Join Date 09/2004
+129
Reply #1 June 8, 2005 11:09:59 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Google searches on word strings, and ranks based upon the number of hits the site gets.  SO that just means you are popular, not that they are evil.  It is a machine, it does not feel, love, want or like. It just runs programs.
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Danny Bassette
Bichur
Join Date 10/2003
+253
Reply #2 June 8, 2005 11:22:30 AM
from WinCustomize ForumsWinCustomize Forums
I use Clusty more than Google.

As far as evil: in and of itself it's not evil. What I find 'evil' is the search is not truly based on actual popularity - it's based on the manipulation of the appearance of popularity coupled with 'paid' popularity.
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Danny Bassette
Danny Bassette
Join Date 02/2003
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Reply #3 June 8, 2005 11:50:58 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Dr. Guy: I don't believe you, computers have feelings too
Bichur: I had not heard of clusty, I'll have to give it a try. And I'll agree 'paid' popularity is bad too.
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Danny Bassette
Dr Guy
Join Date 09/2004
+129
Reply #4 June 8, 2005 12:00:17 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums

Dr. Guy: I don't believe you, computers have feelings too

I was trying to Quote Newton Crosby from Number 5.

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Danny Bassette
Danny Bassette
Join Date 02/2003
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Reply #5 June 8, 2005 12:02:32 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
And we saw how accurate he was too, Johnny lives
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Danny Bassette
craeonics
Join Date 03/2001
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Reply #6 June 9, 2005 2:32:30 AM
from WinCustomize ForumsWinCustomize Forums
The evil aspect is not so much the relatively off-topic things it finds, but those bloody, whatchamacallem, link pages. Google should implement a system that recognises what type of page it is indexing (shop, link page, article, forum, etcetera) and then add modifiers so I can filter out the types of pages I don't want.

Ofcourse, that's rather hard to automate.
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Danny Bassette
allenstafford
Join Date 07/2004
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Reply #7 June 13, 2005 1:45:19 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I don't know what to say when it comes to the whole evil thing but I do find it strange that allenstafford returns more than "Allen Stafford." I didn't think that that space ment so much. Allen Stafford returns allenstafford.com as the first link but that is the only thing having to do with me. Also the links don't seem to age, but I don't how old a page is has anything to do with it. If it is popular then it will get a high ranking.
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Danny Bassette
foreverserenity
Join Date 06/2004
+76
Reply #8 June 20, 2005 10:54:00 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I hear ya Danny! I find it strange too some months ago when I found myself listed under some whacky search that I can't even remember right now. I agree that Google is good but it is weird at the same time!
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