What's 'she' doing in Google search?
Google's search engine includes a spell-checker, and it may be getting the company into some hot water.
A search for the phrase "she invented" prompts this question from the search engine: "Did you mean 'he invented?'"
That query was picked up by bloggers, several of whom noted that similar "corrections" pop up with phrases like "she discovered," "she conquered," and "she saved." Searches for the male versions of those phrases did not prompt any corrections from the company.
It's likely that people at Google may have some explaining to do this weekend at their Mother's Day brunches.
Blog community response:
"The same, by the way, also applies for Google searches for 'she created,' 'she succeeded,' and 'she led.' Lest you think that this happens for all active verbs, Google does not make the same suggestion for 'she followed' or 'she failed.'"
--Balkinization
"From what we know Google's spell-checker at its core works on phrases which are popular on the web, as opposed to manual edits."
--Google Blogoscoped
"Why Google renders so? This case is not same in Yahoo, for this search term, Yahoo is providing proper results. What happened to our GOOGLE ? Lets Google it."
--B-Factor
Margaret is news editor for CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. She also oversees the CNET Blog Network. E-mail Margaret. 
change from moment to moment:
"she killed" brings up "Did you mean 'he killed'" AND vice versa.
"she murdered" brings up the he remark but NOT vice-versa.
That's prejudicial of men.
Most notably "she raped" does NOT bring up the he remark nor
does he bring up she.
On a more positive note:
"she loved" does NOT bring up he and "he loved" does NOT
bring up she.
"she gave" does NOT bring up he and "he gave" does NOT bring
up the she.
All in all, it seems a mixed bag of results. Feminist conspiracy
theorists need to calm down. These quirky results are probably
artifacts of something obscure rather than evidence of the ever-
evil sex (men) trying to put women down.
I don't think Google is intentionally trying to put women down, but intent doesn't matter in these situations. They are now aware of it and they need to fix it. If they don't fix it, it's the same as intending it in the first place.
It's the same as the New Orleans pictures on Google Earth. Google didn't intend to rewrite history, but it had that effect. And people were upset by it because they relied on Google Earth for truth. So Google fixed it and put back images that more accurately represent New Orleans.
Google needs to do the same thing here.
At first I thought Google had some sort of threshold, like if there were fewer than 1 million results, it would suggest a similar search query that resulted in more than 1 million results. But "she invented" returns over 2 million results as of this posting.
"She discovered" returns over 16 million results and Google still suggests "he discovered." With quotes surrounding the phrase it still returns over 1 million results.
Shame on Google.
- by nikonline June 19, 2009 5:05 AM PDT
- Can we please stop with this politically correct crusade? I very much doubt google deliberately tweaked their engine to be more male orientated in it's results. As far as I know it's based on a variety of factors one being which is more common on the web pages displayed.
- Reply to this comment
-
(4 Comments)