Google suggest vi for Emacs and Emacs for vi

[stewartbutler]

I'm fond of "Alex Trebek" including "Did you mean: Who is Alex Trebek." Nice homage.

https://www.google.com/search?q=alex+trebek

[Kyro38]

I had to add hl=en to the url to get the expected result (forcing the page to english)

https://www.google.com/search?q=emacs&hl=en

[arusahni]

I miss the days when Google used to be whimsical and weird.

[Crosseye_Jack]

Do a Barrel Roll

https://www.google.com/search?q=do+a+barrel+roll

[lqet]

This one is also nice:

https://www.google.com/search?q=festivus

[edgyquant]

Doesn’t seem to work on Safari/iPad

[globuous]

That's hilarious ! Reminds me of the « french military victories » query that suggested « french military defeats » (which, as a Frenchman myself, pissed me off in a funny way :p)

[gspr]

It's also funny how the way you recount the story is the way most people remember it. It is, in fact, not what happened!

What really happened was that someone created a web page that resembled the Google results – and included that suggestion. They managed to get that page to become the number one hit for the search term "french military victories". The idea was then that if someone hit "I'm feeling lucky", it would seem like Google suggested "french military defeats".

The page is still up, although the Google-like appearance is no longer very up to date: https://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html

[tyingq]

More: https://searchengineland.com/the-big-list-of-google-easter-e...

[ghostDancer]

Some AI just want to watch the world burn.

[vipa123]

This is obviously some plain old I

[racl101]

Don't they all?

[kazinator]

The Google organization is clearly sensitive to the role of online services play in promoting divisiveness, and doing something about it.

[qz2]

Clearly the issue is it should suggest vi for emacs and vi for vi :)

[smithza]

Absolutely not. Nor should anyone nod towards the bastard child of the two called spacemacs ... Emacs FTW :)

[ComputerGuru]

*nvim for vi

[bryanrasmussen]

I liked how if you go to vi the page has the following:

Did you mean emacs

A top ad placement for VI(trademarked) Vodafone and Idea which are now trademarked together! So exciting.

A top stories link - Vi (Vodafone) launches Rs 948 family postpaid plan with unlimited benefits: Check details The Indian Express·14 hours ago View all

Which is really great that I can keep up on all the news about Vodafone.

questions people ask about Vi, half of which are about editor and other half not.

at 100% zoom on my mac air I get half of the questions interestingly enough before I have to scroll down.

Wikipedia page about the editor

So I have to scroll down to see the first relevant hit, now of course it makes total sense that vi has other hits, also because in Danish it means we, but the dumb joke on the top makes it sort of silly, especially if I just followed from emacs to vi, because in that case I would think - huh, a vote for ranking results for text editor +10.

Maybe I'm just easily irritated right now.

[boogies]

> Wikipedia page about the editor

> So I have to scroll down to see the first relevant hit

FWIW this is the top result on DuckDuckGo and Searx, and on the latter most of the first screenful of results are about the editor (all if you count https://vi-editor.com/). Interestingly the first screenful of searx results all come from DDG (the next has many from reddit), but the pages are definitely different.

Edit: and on Startpage! So apparently your results may just be the result of Google trying to create a personalized filter bubble for you.

[strombofulous]

This definitely has something to do with your (or my!) search bubble because the top link for `vi` for me is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi, followed by "Basic vi Commands - Colorado State University" and "How to Use the vi Editor - University of Washington" (vim.org is the 4th link)

[oceliker]

In US, behind a pi-hole, all results on the first page except one are directly vi-related. Not sure if this might have something to do with the fact that I've been searching spacemacs keybindings nonstop in the past 2 weeks.

[pwinnski]

I don't normally use Google.

I search for 'vi' and all of my links are about the editor.

You experience is clearly customized for you.

This is why I don't normally use Google.

[swiley]

"Did you mean: vi"

That sounds like a "passive aggressive" post from /g/ haha!

There's also this https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1333622758052388864/photo/1

Someone from google said search is just a kind of AI. I think some other people like to say AI is just a random number generator that's good at convincing people there's some intelligence.

[eitland]

There's something AI-like going on, it just happens to be significantly dumber than the old thing:

My "favorite" type of search problem is when I as a developer search for Angular mat-table and it shows me tables with mattresses on: Clearly something is going on in there but it is dumber than most dogs and to make matters worse - less obedient too (For 10 years Google couldn't get itself to accept when I asked for verbatim results, they just had to insert some absolutely irrelevant pages into the the top 10 results every time to waste my time. Now I have changed my defaults, DDG fails just as badly on this, but trying in Google is faster from DDG than the other way around and also it feels good.)

[Ideabile]

Also `recursion` is interesting.

[cmehdy]

And askew

[WillYouFinish]

I guess this is manually set by some employee, but I wonder if such links might have been also created automatically for some topics.

[rilindo]

Cheeky, google. What's next, type Windows and you suggest Linux?

[devenblake]

Search: install windows 10

Did you mean: install gentoo

[elchin]

Also "erlich blachman" and "erlich bachman"

[racl101]

Search for "Star Trek"

Google: Did you mean "Star Wars"?

[_verandaguy]

In the same vein, Wikipedia will disambiguate "The one with the whales" to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

[adembudak]

When I type "string", it returns commercials for g-string models. I love it because it makes me realize I'm living in in a small bubble.

[ajaimk]

ha; this says more about your search history than you think :-)

I get results for Java, Molecular Biology, String Instrument repair shops & a video by Shawn Mendes - Strings.

[MereInterest]

Try working with a library that prefixes all of its class definitions with T and defines its own string class. That was the day that I learned on a work computer that a TString may refer to a type of underwear and not just a library class.

[jonjacky]

A friend was seeking information about StripX, a product for stripping insulation from wires. I heard him say, "Note to self - do not type 'strip x' into Google in a family environment."

[rat87]

If you think that's something try googling c-strings (not at work)

[staticvar]

I thought this was going to be a link to a technical article suggesting the merge of vim and emacs... Vimacs.

[rozab]

https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil

https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=300

[mijoharas]

you mean spacemacs.

[0x1F8B]

Heh I saw this the other day and just assumed that easter egg had always been there.