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Et tu, Google?

Posted: April 14, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: blog | Tags: , | 4 Comments »

In 2008, cuil, a search engine startup, displayed my bio alongside a photo of deceased actress Hilary Mason. In January 2013, Bing confused us, this time putting my photo next to her bio (they fixed it after a suitable amount of mocking on Twitter).

Today, Google did the same thing. (live search link)

Today I win the internet?

Screen Shot 2013-04-14 at 4.59.24 PM

If you zoom in on the bio section, you can clearly see that it’s her bio with a photo of me (originally from Crain’s New York 40 under Forty). Further, if you go into her filmography, you continue to see my photo.

I’m most proud of my starring role in the amazing film Robot Jox. (bottom right of the image below)

robot_jox

I know that entity disambiguation is a hard problem. I’ve worked on it, though never with the kind of resources that I imagine Google can bring to it. And yet, this is absurd!

Note: It’s also been pointed out to me that there’s a slim possibility that Google’s confusion stems from my own post about Bing’s error, in which case, this post will certainly make the confusion worse. To that I say — bring it on, technofuture irony!

 

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Published by hmason