

Ask HN: Help use Google Doodle to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 - pitt1980

Finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a problem google could solve by crowdsourcing the search on the google doodle<p>They could use an algorithm to generate different satellite images through  the possible search images as the google doodle, they could put a toggle button, &#x27;anything look like a plane or wreckage here?&#x27;  Yes&#x2F;no.   For every yes, show it to more people, see if they agree<p>I’m sure google has better algorithm experts to figure out what the best images to show are than I can figure out,<p>but google can find that plane<p>I&#x27;ve already submitted this to google via email at proposals@google.com as suggested on http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;doodles&#x2F;about<p>I suspect there are people on HN who are fewer degrees of seperation from who figures out the google doodle than I am though<p>If you happen to be one of those people, who might be able to send a personal email, or send a text, or make a phone call to someone who could advocate for that being the google doodle, I would appreciate that<p>needless to say, if google was able to help solve this mystery, I would imagine that would be pretty good publicity for the company<p>Thanks for your consideration
======
err4nt
Google is a website commonly visited by people of all ages. Every doodle I
have seen has been whimsical and also safe for children, but putting a doodle
searching for wreckage like this would be asking children all over the world
when they look at their computer one day, "Do you see 300 dead people in this
photo, Yes or No?" I can't see Google finding this an acceptable use of their
brand, even though their homepage does command a lot of eyeballs.

Perhaps Google CAN use their influence to help the search, but I don't think
it will be with a doodle. Is there any more appropriate Google-owned venue
where this would be more acceptable?

~~~
esdailycom
Another thing - a script to do this could take at least 2-3 days to code.
Things could change pretty drastically by then. Of course, we might be able to
reuse the code for another unfortunate time.

------
camillomiller
That's an interesting idea but I guess the problem here is about setting a
precedent. Why is it ok for that plane and not many other uses (e.g. Amber
alerts)? They just wouldn't want to go there

~~~
Houshalter
It's their website, they should be able to do what they want with it. Nothing
about them would obligate them to assist in _every_ instance. There is no
slippery slope.

Also, maybe they _should_ consider doing amber alerts and stuff like that. But
it's independent of this question.

------
pizza
It's a well-intentioned idea, but another thing I see wrong with it is that
there are, what, 200 million square miles the plane could be in? Of which we'd
only expect one to contain the plane (..hopefully..). You're just going to get
too much noise/too many trolls to observe a 5.0e-9 event precisely (sure, you
could weight the 'yes' pictures to show up more often, but wouldn't that just
give more power to the trolls, and thereby obscure further the chance of
seeing the actual plane picture?)

~~~
Houshalter
You'd just show people the pictures multiple times, and take the one with the
most yeses. Discard the results (or weight them a lower amount) of people that
just press the button over and over again, or stuff like that.

