How fast is Google at finding out obscure information? A newspaper in the UK pits it against a phone and a library. The results are pretty interesting, and while not even remotely scientific, does prove that sometimes Google isn’t always the best answer for everything.
Comments
Umm, er.., for “The Library” they should have factored in travel time to get there from your house 🙂 To be fair they also could have factored in the time it takes to fire up your computer.
And of course, with a phone, you have to know who to call.. and with a library, you have to be an expert researcher (who is who’s who?) or bend the ear of a busy librarian.
While it helps to be a GoogleGeek to get the bestest and fastest from the search engine (which they are not, “back” being a popular word would not have mattered if he put “back care” in quotes) you can usually get there with nearly no a priori knowledge in due time.
Besides, if Google doesn’t know something, that knowledge doesn’t really exist anyway 🙂
I was also going to bring up the point that they obviously dont know how to make use of the full potential of Google, because of the same point about back care.
If they would have used it more effectively, I imagine that they would have been 1st a few more times with Google.
I agree with both of you, however, the way I look at it is like this: Is the common man going to know how to be able to use Google to its fullest potential? Probably not, so having them use Google with all the various switches and what not that will allow for precise searches could’ve yielded them results quicker, it might not have really provided much useful information.
Well, Is the common man going to know how to use the library efficiently? Probably not…..