Google sucks now
by Rob - November 29th, 2024.Filed under: Uncategorized.
Google is dangerous since it’s started serving up AI answers instead of actual links to reliable sources as the first thing you see after a search.
I put in “major Canadian cities,” and it replied:
What are the ten largest cities in Canada? The top ten largest cities in Canada are: Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Mississauga, North York, Winnipeg, Scarborough, and Vancouver.
That’s flat-out wrong. Neither North York nor Scarborough have been cities since 1998 — twenty-six years now; more than a quarter of a century. They were consolidated into Toronto back then.
The correct answer (via The Canadian Encyclopedia) is, in descending order of population: Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Mississauga, Vancouver, Brampton, Hamilton. That is, Google had two things that don’t even exist in its list of the top ten, and it missed both Brampton and Hamilton.
And, although Google didn’t explicitly state that it was ordering them by size, it was clearly trying to do that — but got it wrong. According to the latest Canadian census figures, Winnipeg should come before Mississauga, not after.
Sheesh.