Is Google getting stupider?

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As I grow at the wordsmyth-ing racket, I find it fun, even entertaining to use words that the reader must pull out their Dyctionary to sus out the meaning.

Well, using Google Chrome, I think that they have a spell checker running that analyses everything I pen. Lately, I do notice that their spell checker seems less and less able.

Has anyone noticed this. Is Google deliberately dumming down, or is it simply due to the fact that there is a huge influx of young employees who have no respect for the trade?

Gwendolyn

Comments

google

has never impressed me in the least. I try activly to never use it for anything, or anything associated with it, except picasa, which they gobbled up with dollars.

Google

So what do you use for a research engine? I use it to find facts, spelling and thesarus among other things.

engines

I prefer dogpile or ask, or whatever I can find for searches. I refuse to use Bing either (from the evil empire) The rest are built into MS word and I still check even that. I still think I'm smarter than it is, despite being out of school since 1970. But then again, I also refuse to use ANY "social media" as my space, my face, ad nauseum.

Most of the "altrnative" search systems use...

... Google or Bing search and then do some post processing. Because who else have resources to have at least 3 copies of WWW in RAM? (Yes, priests of my branch of Webstianity preach that you can't do effective search without 3 copies of WWW in RAM :-) )

You think you've got problems...

Andrea Lena's picture

...this is the search engine I got stuck with...

11934edce6f3d0bfd.jpg

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

Hey, don't knock it. Those

Hey, don't knock it. Those are really easy to work with, and on.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Pre-50's Chevrolet Pickup?

I recognize the fuel sediment bowl. Is that an after market oil filter? Yes, they were easy to make run, but I think they only got about 50k out of an engine right?

Hugs

Gwendolyn

Google & Assorted Engines

Andrea,

I just loved your foto and joke about your engine ! Some day soon our computers will be AIs, and will be able to talk to us in voice rather than just being typed at, and they will know everything there is to know or will have almost instant access to any reference book in the world, but meanwhile we have to put up with them being even more stupid than us humans, which is quite difficult for them when you think about it.

Briar

It might not be employees

One of the options is 'Add to dictionary', if this reports back to Google (I don't know if it does) then idiots trying to get rid of notices, or who want to use 'alternative spellings' could add incorrect words to YOUR spell-check. The longer it goes the more wrong entries which give false 'correct' matches for miss-spelled words.

Another thing I've noticed is that which field you're typing in affects whether it works or not. For example in typing this comment (in Firefox, but it works the same in chrome) it didn't catch the error I had in the subject line. I had to copy it to the comment box to get it to correct 'employees'.

Google has changed

I think Google's days as a cool, innovative company are over. Ever since they decided to launch their own Facebook clone, their focus shifted very heavily and definitely to extracting their users' demographics as deeply and thoroughly as they can. It's a lot easier to sell our data to advertisers that way, and makes a better package to hand over to the government.

I've stopped using everything Google (except YouTube, but even that rarely) about a year ago. It was pretty difficult because I used their maps, Google docs, years and years of gmail, Google News, the calendar, Picasa, Chrome, Blogger, Reader, ...

I won't get an Android phone, because that, too, is Google.

It was shocking to see how much of my data they had. Well, I'd given it to them, yeah. Google is insidious, and it took a fair amount of effort to extricate myself and find substitutes for all their services.

Alternative is use of i* or Win8

i* requires your credit card info (and that is available only with your actual name and address) to use anything on their device. Now they are trying to bring it even onto laptops and workstations. Win8 devices are currently made by 1.5 companies and pricing is making these devices into the luxury. Combined with lack of third party apps...
Google is evil enough but on the other hand it does not ask you for your card info and real identity if you don't use +.
About "stupid" - I don't see any problems with spellcheck.
On the other hand, last I checked Chrome was only mobile browser with paranoid (AKA incognito) mode. Which makes it natural choice if you want to read BCTS in a house with kids or ununderstanding relatives/friends.

Private browsing

Daniela Wolfe's picture

Firefox has Private browsing (ie incognito mode) and it's recently regained the lead as far as browsing speed.

I've tried Chrome and the minimalist user interface drives me up the wall, plus I don't like the way web-kit based browsers render coding. The lastest versions of FF do come with a scaled down interface as well, BUT It can be switched back to the older interface.


Have delightfully devious day,

Sorry, but...

Latest version available for my Acer 501 tablet and Motorola phone does not have private browsing option. On PC Opera is very good for most uses (but leaks memory on some Atom machines). Firefox is good, but Chrome has cleaner and less bothersome interface without use of plug-in software. And also on Atom machines leaks memory with the slowest rate :-)

Cleaner interface

I hate those. Everything hidden from easy access, names changed and such. I like my options to be visible. I'll accept a single menu drop down, but when you have to click on this, then go down and click on that, then click on something else, just to get to a menu that gives you what you were looking for, that's BS. FF12 did that to me, but I accidentally found a setting to restore the old look, and I'm much happier.

Oh, I also disable 90% of the auto-correct functions, just using a simple spell-check that I get to make the final decision on. Maybe I meant to spell that word that way.

Now, if I could just find a way to roll MS Office 2007 back to 2003!


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

Why did you upgrade office,

Why did you upgrade office, anyway? There have been no substantiative 'improvements' to any office product except Outlook since Office 97.

I use Office 2000 and 2003 on the two computers I have to have running 'office' (for data work), and everything else is Libreoffice.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Not my choice

My main computer acquired a virus (Avoid PhotoBlip on Facebook) and is currently non-operative. Everytime I think about following the repair procedure I found online (which involves reediting the Registry) I get cold feet. A repair shop quoted me close to $200 to get it running again, but I'm now out of work so I can't afford that.

I'm currently using a laptop I bought from a friend last fall. At the time she was out-of-work while I still had a job, she needed money and I bought this from her. Unfortunately it has the Vista OS and MSOffice 2007 preinstalled on it. I've mostly changed the settings on Vista to give a more Windows Classic look and feel, but Word 2007 appears to be a lost cause. Some functions I've found by accident, but it is still a PITA to use.


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

There are free "cure" utilities available ...

... from many antivirus software makers. I usually use cureit by Dr Web. It allows you to run virus check in safe mode. But I think Kaspersky and Symantec have similar free utilities. Some antivirus systems have trial version or licenses.
Just be carefully with Symantec/Norton - sometimes it's harder to get rid of it then to clear virus.
And don't be afraid to edit registry. It's normal operation that can be safely performed by average windows user.

Send me a PM - I'll try to

Send me a PM - I'll try to work with you on cleaning it up. that's what I do for a living, and I can point you to move of the _right_ tools. Most of which aren't called "Dr. Anything".

you'll need/want a flash drive, that's about it.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Firefox

Although Firefox is the most customisable browser in existence, it's perhaps not the best choice for those aiming for a Google-free existence in that Mozilla's primary funder is Google.

However, although Google do collect a lot of demographic data on you (and are busy integrating their social network across their product range), all that information remains in-house (their privacy policies are quite clear on that point - and in every other respect they're no more invasive or insecure than the privacy policies for Facebook, Bing or Yahoo). Given the vast amounts of traffic passing through their servers each day, it's possible your information stays purely in their computers and is rarely (if ever) looked at by a human. Because they are also the world's largest ad broker, they can serve contexual advertisements to you without any of the companies buying advertising with them knowing anything about you.

Their social network was designed from the ground up to be secure - it runs on https by default, you control for every single post who gets to see it, there are numerous visual indicators to differentiate public from private posts, games are vetted by Google before being allowed on the platform (so only extract what information they *need* to run), and the API only allows access to stuff you've marked as public.

Conversely, many other sites on the web can (and do) sell the information you give them to third party companies, while FB has signed a deal with Microsoft.

So in summary: Google do collect a lot of demographic data, but personally identifiable information isn't shared with third parties such as advertisers (their primary revenue source). As far as privacy policies go, they're almost certainly not significantly better or worse than pretty much any other company you share data with. After all, your ISP probably knows almost every single website you visit, your bank probably knows where you use your credit / debit cards, the government (wherever in the world you are) know a lot and can probably ask any company you do business with to divulge your transactions / data on request (and in some jurisdictions, even make it illegal for those companies to let you know the government have been prying!)...


As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

In addition, ...

If you have online persona separate from your IRL prsona, there is no sure way for Google to link them. Especially if you don't use same IP to access them. With fruit related products - there is basically nothing you can legally do without providing credit card details.

And even more bugs in old :-)

AutoCAD 2012 have bugs in 95% of it's basic drawing and rendering functions. Compared with no obvious bugs in main functions of version released in 1992.
Same story with word and excel, radios, washing machines, cars, rockets and airplanes. B747 designed in late 1960-s is still best commercial airliner. Russian Il-86 still had no accidents with casualties among passengers. And it's in 27 years of regular flights.

Old inventions...Google was established in 1997...

Andrea Lena's picture

...if Google were trans, its endocrinologist would okay it for tee-blockers and start thinking about SRS in a couple of years, right?

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena