Putting Google to the Test

Big Nothing writes "Google has built its reputation on being the fastest and most accurate way to find information. But is the internet really the quickest way to access facts - and get them right? The Guardian puts Google to the test against more old-fashioned methods."

Comments

Yeah but it was fast enough.....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

To win radio trivia call in contests a few years ago. Using Google to answer trivia just like in Ghost World.

Re:Yeah but it was fast enough.....

[dasmegabyte]

In college we used to have a group call-in radio trivia show called the "mad trivia party." The panel gives a series of really tough questions; when you call in you can answer up to three of them. For every question you get right, you may ask a new question. You get a point for answering, and a point for stumping the panel, for a max of 6 points per call.

Because the panel were always obscenely up on standard trivia, we had to ask very cunning questions or we'd never win anything. For a while, the studio had no internet connection, so the last three points were almost a lock. Google for some obscure fact, like the number of canals in Antananarivo, and you get the point.

When they finally got a PC, it became tougher. Anything that could be googled for in the time it took to take a call would be caught. So, we started working broken into smaller teams. One team on a PC on google. The other team as runners in the university library. Walkie-talkies connected the two who then passed the answers and new questions along to a dialer who would try and get a position in the phone queue.

Yeah, I know. Crazy set up for a trivia game, eh? But it was worth it. Besides being a very fun way to spend a nerdy evening, the prizes were pretty cool, and the players a fairly unusual breakdown of college goths, high school skatepunks, idie rock losers and retired people with nothing better to do.

Time to get to the Library?

[stlthVector]

Great comparison but they don't take into account how long it takes to get to the library, phone charges, etc. For me, 15 minutes on Google is faster than 30 seconds at the library.

Is google really that accurate?

[titaniam]

I'd have to say that google deliberately alters certain rankings. The proof is when you do a google search for search engine. By almost any measure of page rank google would have to be listed first, but it is not. This means that google deliberately lowered their rankings. It makes sense that if you searched for a search engine on google, they've already got you and it doesn't really matter at what position they rank themselves. But by doing so they can potentially shield themselves from antitrust issues, and help hide the likely fact that for other categories they do alter the rankings for their advantage. Up and coming competitors in other arenas than search can be quietly disposed of if no-one can find them.

Interesting but...

[hal2814]

This article assumes that the person looking for information already knows other means of finding information. I didn't know about the Who's Who book and even if I did, I might not have one handy. I think these results are a little less than accurate for most people. Also, the author directly phones some people. What if I don't know exactly who to phone? I think Google will win in that case.

Re:Interesting but...

[NexusTw1n]

"I didn't know about the Who's Who book and even if I did, I might not have one handy. "

I find it slightly disconcerting that we may be producing a generation that has no research skills bar Google.

When I went to school we were taught library skills, is that still the case, or do teachers assume you are all going to hit google?

Google does not trawl the entire internet, it barely touches it in fact, relying on it for your information, is like relying on the Discovery channels for your education or one station only for your news.

Besides, half the fun of researching in the library is the irrelevant but interesting information you stumble across as you browse!

Re:Interesting but...

[Swashedbuckles]

Teachers are trying to combat this now by requiring sources other than the internet. My last year of high school we were only allowed two or three internet sources. The rest had to be dead-tree books, magazines, newspapers, etc.

What I find even more disconcerting are students who put down "www.google.com" in their bibliography.

The answer to your question...

[ArbiterOne]

... is YES. Books on, say, Napoleon, you can find in a library. But ever tried to find, say, ten pages, or even a paragraph, about Napoleon? Especially in a 1200+ page book, or several? Ever tried looking something up in a card catalog? Or finding one sentence in a huge book? The answer to the question in the article is a definite YES.

How?

[FreeLinux]

How does the "Library" provide sub two minute results? The article doesn't say.

Things Failed to be mentioned...

[Ghengis]

This article, while interesting, failed to mention several other aspects that, at least for me, make google the best source.

1 When using the phone, there are really two searches. The one you care about, and the one before that where you try to find the correct phon number. This can take quite a while in some instances.

2 I have to leave my house (which could entail getting dressed, which adds more time) and drive 4 minutes to the library. Once I get my online library account through the county, however, this will no longer be a factor :).

3 I actually have to have a conversation with someone on the phone. Google can be a more private experience, which depending on what I'm searching for, can allow me to better focus on finding the information I need.

4 With google and the library, I can have multiple searches running at once. With the phone, I'd have to pay extra per search.

5 With the library and phone, I can only use them during business hours. I can use Google 24/7.

Biased?

[toesate]

The article report compare between Google, Phone and Library.

I think this is a biase comparison.

In the phone and library search, it is assumed upon a narrowed subject or particular topic. Where the searcher knows where to look for the _authorative_ answer, for example the title of the particular book to get the answer.

Overall, I think the winner is pretty inconclusive, but it still does shows that Google is a really good search engine - where you can actually find a reasonable result.

This all is a bit unrelevant...

[dot-magnon]

The methods all have their uses. I don't use google find old classical music scores, but I don't use the library to find recent news stories, software, and such. There's a use for all these things, and it's important to preserve it all.

There's nothing that beats human interaction and direct knowledge in many cases, but people are not there all the time. If I had them right at me, I wouldn't need google. Google (and the library) is a compilation of what a bunch of people once knew, worked on, built further on, et cetera. Now, since it's impossible to reach these people, we wrote books. Books that we can read, to learn what people found out. That has it's value. Now, we can find the book, read about it, even read it, using google, or we could find other information rapidly that the library won't have for a long time - at least not before the next day's newspaper.

After all, the library might even have their search engine against a GoogleServer in the back room :-)

Final point: Cherish all sources of knowledge, and use them appropriately. That will give you the best results.

Google Answers Researcher

[skermit]

I'm a researcher with Google Answers and it's never a must that we use Google to answer questions that come in. Actually, for one-off's and questions which I know can be answered with a phone call or two, I won't even bother with the internet. Of course, then again, there was that one time I called over a hundred different restaurants to see who was serving on Christmas Day. Hah.

Re:god google

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear God,

Google can search anything that can be searched.

Unfortunately, Google is unable to search my soul and desire.

You need to give me something better.

Henry, 19 years old

Google Is The Bomb....

[bobej1977]

I think it was a bit unfair in that the library and phone users seemed quite skilled at the use of those respective mediums, whereas a skilled Googler would easily be able to halve those times.

I've often said that I'd have to quit programming if Google ever disappeared. I lean on it for information in the same way that excessively using a calulator will lead you to punching in 1 + 1. In fact, I'm so good at it that people sometimes think I'm a genius problem solver, when really it's just a matter of creative googling on an error message.

Not addressed in the article...

[onebuttonmouse]

Try calling Piers Morgan's press office at 4:00am. I bet your friend James won't appreciate you calling him when he's just sat down to dinner. The Library is a very poor information source when it's closed.

Google would beat any of those methods 'out of hours'.

Re:Not versus, with

[DroopyStonx]

I'm not quite sure I agree with that.

I first had access to the internet back in '96 when I was a sophomore in High School. I've written TONS of research papers since then, even more so in college. Using the internet to look up information not only returns better (and more) information than the library would have, but it's faster. For example, you could look up ATP in an encyclopedia, but if you saw "nucleotide" and didn't know what that was.. guess what? Flip to Nucleotide.. look it up.. etc etc. as opposed to clicking a single link provided on MOST pages that explain ATP. Faster, more efficient data retreival.

Library resources take up WAY too much time, and they aren't always guaranteed to have what you're looking for. It's a flat out waste of time. I'm not saying "burn all the books", but there is absolutely NO point in using the library for research as opposed to the internet.

For example, I had to write a 10 page paper comparing and contrasting Dostoyevsky and Joseph Conrad. The professor wanted us to use the LIBRARY to look up magazine articles that other journalists wrote which discussed either of these two authors. I wanted to stab my teacher in the eye for that one. I saw how much time other students wasted in the library trying to find their information, and I really can't say I understand how exactly the library is BETTER.

We had two weeks straight where our entire class was in the Library researching this. Let me tell you, it's not fun trying to find resources that 20 other students are trying to search for at the same time. Needless to say, I left early every time we went down there. A few days before the report was due, I used google and found all the articles I'd ever need for this paper in little under an hour.

When all was said and done, I got an A on my paper. What'd it cost me? An hour of research, which is about a 10th of what most other people spent on it (there were a few others who also used Google).

This is what I don't understand about professors. They're so hard up for you to use the library, but there's really no point in it. If my assignment is to compare and contrast two authors, wtf difference does it make if I use the library vs. Google? It's like those math teachers in the 60's who frowned upon calculators and insisted you use your "handy, tried and true" slide rule.

Free BEER using Google!

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

Back when Ricochet was around, I would go into local pubs in Atlanta on trivia nights, the would offer something like $20 certificates or more for the winner of the contest. With Ricochet (192kbps wireless internet), a PDA, and Google, I could walk in late - get a perfect score on the questions I answered and eat and drink free.

Ricochet was around $70 amonth, but at 20-60 bucks a week it more than paid for itself. Best thing, there were no rules that said you couldn't access the internet. People were amazed at my trivia knowledge.

Re:Free BEER using Google!

[dasmegabyte]

I dunno. I used to do trivia at the Owl Bar, which has a strict no-cell phones rule. If it's not in your head, it shouldn't go on the paper.

And yet, people sneak their cell phones all the time. They walk outside, hide in the bushes, use text messages, etc.

My team didn't care, because usually the cheaters didn't do that much better than we did. All your really smart friends come with you to trivia anyway :)

Speed vs accuracy

[colinduplantis]

My googlation has prompted me to submit the following observations:

• the value of the information presented is inversely proportional to the effort made presenting it
• the accuracy of the data is inversely proportional to the effort required to collect it

I've noticed that the most useful pages to me are the ones that contain plain text, like mailing list archives, for example. Maybe that's just an artifact of the type of information I'm typically trying to collect (technical questions, etc).

The second point is just a general observation. When I was in school, the web was a wet-behind-the-ears DARPA project that nobody had heard of. To write a paper, I had to go to the library and look stuff up in books and periodicals. It took friggin' forever, but the results were pretty accurate. Now, I can type something in google and get a bazillion hits pretty much instantly, but I have to carefully search through the results to weed out lunatic fringe webpages (unless that's what I'm looking for), out-of-date webpages with no date on them, etc. I wonder how that affects kids today doing research papers? Imagine never having to go to the library, but, instead, having to hone your skills of scepticism.