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Putting Google to the Test

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the time-is-of-the-essence dept.

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."

8 of 441 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah but it was fast enough..... by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Yeah but it was fast enough..... by dasmegabyte · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Hey freaks: now you're ju
  2. Time to get to the Library? by stlthVector · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Interesting but... by hal2814 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Interesting but... by NexusTw1n · · Score: 5, Interesting
      "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!
      --
      It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
  4. The answer to your question... by ArbiterOne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... 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.

  5. This all is a bit unrelevant... by dot-magnon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. Google Answers Researcher by skermit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    -Christopher Wu
    http://www.christopherwu.net/