Google “she invented”

Eariler this month there was an extremely popular story on Digg which told the story of a guy and an argument he was having with his girlfriend. In an attempt to prove him wrong, his girlfriend did what so many of us now do, she turned to Google for the answer:

I was arguing with my girlfriend about women not inventing anything useful. In an attempt to prove me wrong she Google “She invented” only to have ask Did you mean “He invented”

Why was this such a big deal? It just so happens that there are many, many women inventors from Randi Altschul (invented the world’s first disposable cellphone) to Grace Hopper (world’s first computer compiler) to Mary Walton (developed a method of deflecting smoke stack emissions).

I came back across this story today when I was looking at the most popular stories of the last 30 days on Digg and I went to Google to try the search again for “she invented”:

Google “she invented” - fixed

The Did You Mean “he invented”? is now gone and as can be expected the Digg story (which received over 200 links as tracked by Yahoo) is the top result. Was this “fixed” because of the Digg story gaining such relevance and being on a trusted domain or was this a Google fix?

One thing stories like this do though is show us how much we can sometimes rely on Google, forgetting that at the end of the day - Google is a robot. As much as Google helps us in our everyday lives - is it really making us dumber?


Posted by Chris Winfield at 12:13 pm
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