[orp]

Oh, I realize that. I even agree with their reasoning.

I just don't like the fact that their algorithm is so bad that I came up as a false positive. Algorithms is the one place you don't expect Google to fail.

I mean, come on, the have thousands of my emails, my geolocation, my facebook profile is public, and they can't figure out Or is my real name?

[read_wharf]

They haven't failed. They have a huge body of identified individuals that they can sell to advertisers, efficiently and economically harvested.

Oh, they failed at individual user service? What farmer is concerned about an individual cabbage? It would cost way to much to get down off the truck and carefully retrieve the few units that rolled off the truck.

There is absolutely no failure here. None.

[babarock]

I believe what the OP is saying here is "failure" occurred not on a strategic corporate level, but on a computer-science-algorithm-geek level. He hasn't disclose his full name, so we cannot fully judge, but how would you react if "Joe Smith" came out as a false positive?

Of all the crazy things we're hearing about Google lately, failure on an algorithmic level may be the last thing we expect.

Then again, maybe the name is indeed more subtle than the OP seems to think...

[read_wharf]

And I'm saying that the algorithm is imperfect by design, and accepted as such, because perfection would cost too much in computing and human resources.

You cannot fail a cabbage.

[monkeypizza]

I'm sure cabbage truck designers pay a lot of attention to the cabbage loss rate... Look how much effort was put into the design of shipping containers.

[muchonada]

> What farmer is concerned about an individual cabbage?

What a great analogy! We don't think twice about the farmer leaving a few cabbages out in the field, but we get all up in arms when we realize that we are that cabbage.

[someoneorother]

OMG, a talking cabbage!

[gbog]

> Algorithms is the one place you don't expect Google to fail

Maybe this thing (the reality of names) is not rationalisable, and therefore not modelizable with an algorithm. For instance, I know someone who has chosen the name of a Russian president has his nickname, and I guarantee you it is not his real name. How would Google detect that? On the opposite, "Ng" is a perfectly valid surname in Southern Chinese, and it really looks like a nick...