

Fewer People Want to Know About Computers, Says Google - nsns
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/fewer-and-fewer-people-want-to-know-about-computers-says-google/261271/

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JoeAltmaier
...or the number of non-technical people using Google search has grown in the
same time period.

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gdeglin
I've noticed that for a surprising number of searches, google trends shows a
steep downward decline. If you browse through the categories on the left side
of the link in the article
(<http://www.google.com/finance?q=GOOGLEINDEX_US:COMPUT>) you'll see that 9/10
are declining.

It's probably best to take this article with a grain of salt. Even when you
think logically about the headline this story doesn't make sense.

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short_circut
I suspect that the decline has something to do with Microsoft and Apple
getting their games together and releasing products that actually work.
Windows 7 has never given me trouble except for when I had hardware problems
and OSX seems to do the same,

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PaulHoule
It's amazing how many things are in terminal decline according to Google
trends

[http://www.google.com/trends/?q=new+york&ctab=0&geo=...](http://www.google.com/trends/?q=new+york&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

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b0rsuk
Are you sure it's the _number_ of computer-related searches decreasing and not
the _ratio_ of computer-related searches to all searches ? That would explain
a lot. Computers are increasingly used by people who don't care or even like
technology. It even affects my favorite field - computer games. Games for
techies were games for problem solvers, geeks, fantasy/SF lovers. Games for
mainstream people are quite often mindless fun, sports, or sims. I have
noticed this trend years ago, when I tried to compare the popularity of Linux
versus other operating systems.

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jaybill
That is quite a leap of logic based on a single correlation.

~~~
vm
A lot more of these low-quality "research" pieces from The Atlantic are
popping up on HN.

For a while, the only Atlantic pieces that trickled up were well-researched
and well-thought. So now I'm eager to click on links from what I thought was a
solid news source, but disappointed when I find fluff. Maybe they write less
of those research pieces nowadays? I sure hope they don't become one of those
link-bait crap news sites.

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guscost
I definitely want to know about computers.

