[roca]

Their hiking question is an odd example. Technology like this is probably perfectly fine for asking questions with low downside for wrong answers. But if someone asks "I've hiked Mt Pirongia and now I want to hike Mt Taranaki; how do I need to prepare differently?" and Google erroneously answers "nothing", that could get someone killed.

[xapata]

Are you suggesting that's a reason to not do this research?

[roca]

Not at all. I'm suggesting that when writing up a PR blog post, choose examples where applying your technology is a sensible and safe thing to do.

[xapata]

That makes sense. What would have been a better example?

[roca]

"What is the difference between ebike model ABC and ebike model XYZ?"

[xapata]

I think that one is often answered explicitly by product review sites, for popular brands and models, at least.

[selfhoster11]

The comparison matrix is basically infinite in size when you want to compare last-gen vs newest-gen across several manufacturers, for example.

[roca]

OK. I assume there are questions that aren't answered explicitly by existing pages, where wrong answers don't get people killed. If there are no such questions, that's not my problem.

[ncallaway]

“What are the stylistic differences between Rembrandt and Monet?”

[xapata]

Googling for that particular question, it seems there are several pages answering it specifically. The article implied that no particular page answered the specific question about Mt Fuji, and that MUM had to synthesize the answer. Unfortunately, this article ruins the search results for the specific query it describes. But, the top result describing preparation for Mt Fuji is quite generic.