[Veen]

Which reality is it distorting? Is the old desktop search reality? Why is it more real than mobile results? In truth, none of them are reality. Google Search is an algorithmicaly curated list of web pages - it’s an unfortunate error to believe it represents any reality other than Google’s opinion of what its users want in that second.

[PavlovsCat]

> it’s an unfortunate error to believe it represents any reality other than Google’s opinion of what its users want in that second.

That was also true when search results were purely based on terms entered, barring the domain name affecting the default language, and user configuration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

> A filter bubble – a term coined by Internet activist Eli Pariser – is a state of intellectual isolation that allegedly can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history. As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles.

I remember when was totally normal to settle how a word was spelled by looking what spelling had how many results. I'm not saying that wasn't silly, but I actually remember people actively using that "consensus reality" in forums, all the time. "how did you find that", "I entered X and then it was the third result", "oh yeah I see, thanks". The traditional exception was things blocked on youtube in various countries, but otherwise we took it for granted that if you visit a certain public URL, you get the page someone else would get.

That doesn't mean one confuses those Google search results with reality anymore than every person in the cinema seeing the same movie means they confuse it with reality. It just means that experience is part of the common world they inhabit. When I go into a library, the selection of books there is rather arbitrary, but that's still very different from there just being a clerk who might recommend one book to me, to then lie to someone else and pretend to not know that book.

[Veen]

Google has evolved; whether it's for the better is open to debate. But we agree that it was never reality even if it used to be the same for everyone.

One difference between Google and an old-fashioned library: however arbitrary the collection was, you'd always find the canon, the best selected by the people who could reasonably be expected to know the best. Today, especially on YouTube, there is no canon, no conception of best at all. It's just whatever Google selects according to the signals it deems likely to keep you watching.

[SirLJ]

Whatever, I am way past Google and will not touch their products with 10 foot pole...

[IncRnd]

Google consensus has never been a good way to verify words or meanings. Just look up the definition of the word "definition" in google. The google supplied definition matches no major dictionary online.

[PavlovsCat]

That was over 15 years ago, there were no google supplied anythings, just search results :) And it was just for spelling, not meaning. like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear 397.000.000 results

https://www.google.com/search?q=nucular 172.000 results

Which obviously still works, but it was just the most simple example of "search engine consensus reality" I could think of.