Friday, January 23, 2004

I wonder what would happen if Google suddenly became a really bad search engine? Like Ask Jeeves used to be good about five or six years ago, but then it became shitty and totally ineffective. What if that happened to Google? I find that, both with personal and professional research, I take Google as a definitive indication of What's Out There. If I can't find what I'm looking for in Google, I don't hesitate to say "I can find no evidence that it exists." If it suddenly became bad, how long would it take us to notice? Would everyone in the world be floating for days around thinking there's no existing information on the topic they're looking for until everyone compared notes and suddenly realized that Google sucked? Would it take a really long time to notice and all of humanity just wanders around being ignorant because they can't find the info they're looking for?

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