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Strange (sexist? :p) spelling suggestion from Google

Kevin P. [PersonRank 1]

Monday, September 29, 2008
15 years ago3,357 views

Search for [depicts herself] and Google will ask, "Did you mean: depicts himself."

DPic [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I feel like this has come up in the forum before, but i couldn't find it. Anyways, this kind of thing isn't new http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/today_in_stupid/is_google_sexist.html

Think of it more as Google showing us our own collective sexism

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Something similar was [she invented] being corrected to [he invented] (not anymore as Google tackled it):
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n56.html

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

When there's no spelling error in the query string, Google should change the text from "Did you mean?" to "Would you also like to search for?".

Then, there would be no risk of offending anyone, but the functionality would not need to be overridden as it was with "she invented".

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

But how do they know if something is mispelled or not in the first place? There so many languages and so many new words, or new news-making celebrities (let's just say a new movie comes out and the star is Fredbert Hansgart-Foobarster and people mispell him frequently), that it could be hard to have the definite dictionary on this, right?

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