[sheri]

I don't know why you got downvoted, but you're right. The author seems to claim that Google should know someone searching for collision strategies shouldn't search for bra's or for Michelle Branch on Instagram. Or even suggest that its not possible for one person (male or female) to be interested in both topics.

[1123581321]

The post was downvoted (not by me) for its sarcastic tone and for not taking into account that in the OP's real scenario, the queries were being performed by two different people. If Google assumes the same person can't search for two topics like that in one account, obviously they would be making a crude mistake, but Google has preferred data-driven, sociologically agnostic methods long enough that it's common knowledge on HN. For example, the same behavioral research they're doing with their captcha and behavioral-based authentication should help them lock on to different rates of typing, clicking, etc that two people on the same account might display.

[tlrobinson]

> for not taking into account that in the OP's real scenario, the queries were being performed by two different people

gberger's comment was pointing out that the original comment did not take into account that these particular queries could have been performed by the same people.

That said, it could have been phrased more productively.

[iak8god]

I definitely came away from Tinco's original comment with the icky feeling that a) Tinco's a little too thrilled with how super interesting and intellectual he is, and b) Tinco doesn't have much respect for his girlfriend's interests, and c) Tinco takes it for granted that Google should know that a single person couldn't possibly be interested in the union of those interests, probably because it should know that all the physics and programming and philosophy stuff is "boy stuff" and the rest is "girl stuff".

gberger seems to be reacting (in a slightly less than constructive way) to that same uncomfortable sense.

[tinco]

I would not dare presume to be more intelligent than my girlfriend. I just wanted to emphasize the difference of topics.

That said, I am very thrilled with my interestingness and intellectuality.

[nl]

I thought tinco was saying that Google should know that two parallel threads of research going on at once from separate devices implied that at least two separate people were using the same account.

I read it as a literal example - tinco saw those exact examples.

[RodericDay]

I got the exact same vibe.

[detaro]

> could have been performed by the same people.

But they aren't in the example, and Google is understanding their specific situation wrongly/not in an optimal way. Maybe that's not possible to do, maybe the way they are doing it right now is the best overall, but it is not the best interpretation of the specific situation. Which is all I get from the original comment: "Here is something that they could understand better".

Pointing out that implementing this precisely would be difficult because you can't rely on interest subsets as an indicator would have been a fine response. Immediately accusing the poster of being sexist because it obviously is impossible to do is not, unless you have hard data to support that there is no way to tell the difference.

(I'd assume "disjunct" queries from different devices at the same time very often are different people, or at least worth treating as different sessions. But maybe people use multiple devices at the same time more often than I think?)

[rargulati]

That's incorrect. The GP comment (tinco) is simply relaying a story that says that Google should know that he and his significant other have disjoint interests and query patterns (though they share devices and location). It's an anecdotal story. Someone else could have said that they like things in the join of the two interest sets and dislike something else. Tinco's story helps us learn more about the "entangled session" problem - a known area of research in Google (per the constructive response from nostradamons). Claims aren't made about how to go about doing that (people searching for X will never search for Y), just that Google should have a way of addressing Tinco's specific case.