
Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends - prostoalex
https://medium.com/@dannypage/stop-using-google-trends-a5014dd32588
======
Smerity
I'm glad this was written and has more historical examples than just Brexit.

I could imagine a good portion of the questions could be originating from
students. If a large political or economic event happens, it's not unlikely
for classrooms teachers to task their students to understand what's happening.
Search is the obvious first step for that.

Even more broadly, and in line with the article, extrapolating from a single
coarse data point is a Bad Idea™.

~~~
CydeWeys
Forget students even, I'm an adult with a compulsive information-seeking
habit, as I suspect a lot of other HN readers are. I know who Harriet Tubman
is, but I don't know _all_ there is to know about her, so on the date that her
$20 bill debut was announced I Googled her and read parts of her Wikipedia
article, the same way I am constantly doing for all sorts of current event
topics.

How can wanting to learn more possibly be demonized? Would we rather have a
situation where a big influential vote affecting the future of an entire
nation comes up and no one does any research about it?

~~~
jpeterman
The only really valid part of the linked article is the point about how you
can't make sweeping generalizations based on a very small sample size and a
(relatively) small trend.

Concluding that people probably know what the EU is while searching very
specifically using the phrase "What is the EU" is no more accurate or truthful
than concluding that they don't know what the EU is.

The author says at one point, "perhaps we can more likely conclude". Perhaps
we can. But perhaps we shouldn't make any conclusions and just stick to the
thesis that the press should know better when reporting facts?

~~~
mcbits
True, the article gives no basis to _conclude_ that people searching "what is
the EU" already know what it is, but it seems like a fair default position. I
might search "history of the EU" or "Mitt Romney bio" to get a certain kind of
content outside of current events and gossip. I could also see other people
with similar (limited, but much greater than 0) knowledge searching "what is
the EU" or "who is Mitt Romney" for exactly the same reasons.

The less clueless-sounding queries have spikes on Google Trends that appear
very correlated with the "who is"/"what is" spikes, for what it's worth.

------
Buge
Googling something does not mean you don't know what it is.

Very often I google things that I know quite a bit about. Sometimes to see if
there is any news about it, or just to get to the wikipedia page, and brush up
on a few facts.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Google is indeed rightfully called "the Address Bar of the Internet" in the
article.

Few of the searches I did today[0]:

\- russian letters - because I needed to copy-paste a glyph

\- ramen - because I wanted to double-check this word for one of my today's HN
comments

\- polyvalent - because "wtf does that word in today's HN link mean?"

\- sabaton prague - to get the name of a song I wanted to listen to

\- list polecający - to double-check that's a right name in Polish for
"recommendation letter"

\- shield logo - to quickly find an image URL I could post to office chat so
that the person who stole my mug can know which mug I'm talking about

etc.

I could call only one of these (the "polyvalent") a case of not knowing
something. Rest were mostly "utility searches".

[0] - I'd post more, but for the typical weird Googly reason, they completely
fucked up the search history interface - it's now mixed with sites _visited_
with Chrome, of which I have significantly more than distinct Google queries.
And there is no way to filter the list. Why Google keeps making interfaces
dumber and less usable is beyond me, but I'm started to get sick of it.

~~~
throwanem
Firefox has gotten a lot more usable in the last few versions, and Chrome-
style tab isolation should be here a few versions from now. If they're still
screwing up in any major way, it's in the ever-closer approximation of the
terrible Chrome UI, but there's an extension [1] which solves that quite
handily.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks for the extension link. In my comment though, I didn't mean _Chrome_
interface, I meant the UI of
[https://history.google.com/](https://history.google.com/). It's now made
Inbox-style, but with zero functionality.

~~~
kbenson
I just searched for that and used it for the first time to look to prior
searches to use in another comment, and found the interface to be pretty bad.
But in writing this comment, I found that it has a "go to date" option at the
top and a search box that searches your history. It's actually far better than
I thought on first use (but I'm not sure it qualifies as good).

------
atarian
I honestly took the WP article at face value and told a coworker that Brexit
voters were regretting their decision based on conclusions drawn from Google
trends.

I feel like one of those ants that have been infected by the mind control
fungus, helplessly infecting others with misinformation designed for an
agenda.

~~~
DanBC
To be fair, some voters are regretting their decision.

Here's the former editor of The Sun (a large uk tabloid "red top") saying he
regrets voting leave.

[http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/former-sun-editor-
ke...](http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/former-sun-editor-kelvin-
mackenzie-admits-remorse-after-voting-to-leave-the-eu-a3281921.html)

There are many others, but I link this one because, well, he should have known
better.

------
deadalus
The Washington Post reporters knew that Google Trends data was not accurate
and misleading. They went with it because: it is a liberal site, wanted to
make people angry against the Brexit voters. Also Jeff Bezos(the owner) has a
beef with Trump and publicly supports liberal media outlets like Gawker.

tldr: Nothing unexpected happened, they knew what they were doing.

~~~
th0ma5
Rather than downvote, I'd love to see some links regarding if the Post has a
liberal bias, that they knew they were publishing inaccurate and misleading
information and did so willingly with intent to deceive, and evidence that
they want their readers to be angry against the Brexit votes.

I totally agree with your other, factual statements, Bezos I'm sure doesn't
care for Trump, and does indeed probably support Gawker. I just can't find
anywhere in the world literature any evidence that supports your other claims.
Or I guess I wouldn't would I?

~~~
bduerst
Same here. It's seems to me they're trying to spread F.U.D., but I would love
to read more if it's backed up.

On the flip side of the coin, some typically conservative media tried to use
Google Trends to prove manipulation of instant search results to be pro-
Hillary [1], with the same results of not really undestanding how instant
search really works [2][3].

[1] [http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/06/10/google-burying-
anti...](http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/06/10/google-burying-anti-clinton-
search-results/)

[2] [http://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-
google...](http://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-google-
debunked)

[3] [https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant-
behin...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant-behind-
scenes.html)

------
minimaxir
In 2014, Facebook made a famous post ([https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-
develin/debunking-prince...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-
develin/debunking-princeton/10151947421191849)) mocking researchers for using
Google Trends data as evidence it would die.

I made a comment along the lines of this a year ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828295))
when people cited Google Trends as statistical evidence people were looking
for a Reddit alternative in light of the controversy back then.

Google Trends is fun for snarky Tweets, but I'm still seeing it used to prove
points in startup blogs, which is a problem.

~~~
huac
It's easy for Facebook to say, here's our actual engagement numbers because we
have (nearly) perfect tracking! But from an outsider's perspective, say a
journalist or a hedge fund bro, it's difficult to perform any truly rigorous
analysis involving these unobservable behaviors. So people come up with
proxies - Google Trends, polls, or if you're truly adventurous, credit card
spend information. [1]

Anyways, using products like Google Trends is worth a shot if only because
there's few substitutes to imperfect information.

[1]: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-capitalone-
insidertrad...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-capitalone-
insidertrading-idUSKCN0UR2KR20160114)

~~~
minimaxir
Printing misleading charts and presenting as fact is often worse than printing
nothing at all.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I wonder how many people do that just to lie to people, because if people
believe that Google Trends pseudostatistic, it can become a self-fulfilling
prophecy?

~~~
throwanem
> I wonder how many people do that just to lie to people

Ooh, lots, I'm sure. It's a brilliant way to lie, because it makes catching
you out look like a lot of hard work.

------
partiallypro
Let's face it, the only reason publications turned to Google Trends to show
people Googling "What is the EU?" is because it fit the narrative they had out
of the gate. I see the good and bad of Brexit (I'd say "remain" has a stronger
case if the EU would reform;) yet the more I read from the media, the more
I've leaned pro-Brexit, just out of spite. Every article I've read treats
those who were pro-Brexit as if they were complete idiots, as if their
concerns aren't legitimate. Even if I disagree with someone's policy position
doesn't mean I should completely ignore their concerns and write them off as a
bunch of idiots.

Absolutely infuriating to listen to and read. Maybe it's my imagination, but
the media as a whole has gotten a lot more preachy within the past 6 months.
The new trend seems to be "data journalism" in which most people omit numbers
to the contrary of a certain world view (Vox literally has been getting a
dataset from Reddit on 'mass shootings.' Even the NYTs and MotherJones called
them out, to no avail. Not sure how people are letting them off the hook.)

I honestly can connect more with those that were "Leave" on the E.U. now than
in the beginning; simply because the media coverage has come off as so
elitist.

~~~
marcoperaza
The battle lines have shifted. It's now nationalism vs. globalism, not
conservative vs. liberal. It turns out that the elite, while split between
conservatism and liberalism, is firmly in the globalist camp. The people tend
to go the other way, especially once the hollow veneer of political
correctness is shattered (terrorist attacks, migrant crises, and economic
downturns can do that).

You're seeing it in Britain, where Brexit crossed party lines. The people were
told they couldn't have a say on immigration or many other aspects of their
lives. Britain's cultural identity, their nationhood, would just have to give
way over time to a pan-European globalized society. They were told that high-
minded technocrats in Brussels, not the British nation, should run their
country. It turns out that the common people don't like that deal.

You're seeing it in America. Trump is not running on a policy platform. He's
signed up to enough conservative pieties to get the Republican Party behind
him, but his whole campaign is really premised on kicking out the ruling elite
and restoring government for the interests of the American people, not the
establishment and their globalist agenda. Regardless of whether you agree that
his policies will accomplish that, there's no denying that that's the core
sentiment that he's tapping into. This is the quote that seems to be extremely
popular among his supporters: _" We will no longer surrender this country or
its people to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true
foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions
that tie us up and bring America down."_

You're seeing it in continental Europe, with nationalist parties pulling
supporters from both the establishment conservative and left-wing parties.
Marine Le Pen's National Front has a very good chance of winning the election
in France next year. Her platform isn't right-wing or left-wing, it's
nationalist and seeks to preserve the culture of the French nation, including
their social and economic model.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining rapidly in reaction to the disastrous
decision to allow migrants to flood into Germany. They have benefit in the
polls at the expense of both the main left and right parties.

The supporters of these movements are unified in one thing: a love for and
desire to preserve their _nation 's_ culture and values, which they perceive
to be under siege from uncontrolled immigration and globalization.

~~~
bjacobel
"We just want to preserve our culture" is the loudest racial dog-whistle I
know. It's been around since Jim Crow and it looks like it's not going away
any time soon.

~~~
marcoperaza
Just because something can be a racial dog-whistle doesn't mean that it's
wrong or that it's always motivated by racism. I'm a Hispanic-American, the
first generation born in America, and I'll be casting my ballot for Mr. Trump.

Here's my reasoning. Immigration has to be at levels, under conditions, and
from cultures that are conducive to assimilation. I don't think we have that
today, and what's being proposed by the other side is a big step in the wrong
direction. Immigration to America works when it's a melting pot. When people
are coming to work hard and to earn their own way, not to collect on generous
benefits that would make them rich in their home country (edit:[1]). There was
a time when a large percent of immigrants went home after a few years because
they weren't cut out for America. America does not need millions of low-skill
migrants; we already have more low-skilled people than our economy seems to be
able to accommodate. Immigration must be for the benefit of the American
people, not out of any sense of fairness or duty to potential migrants.

I'm not trying to convince you of my views here, just show you that it's not
as simple as calling the other side a bunch of bigots. There's nothing
inherently wrong with wanting to preserve your culture or to defend the
interests of your nation.

[1] Clarifying in response to rconti below: I'm not saying that most
immigrants are necessarily coming with the express intent on cashing in
welfare checks. I think a welfare state is just not as capable of successfully
integrating immigrants the way America has been able to in the past. I suspect
generational poverty among descendants of immigrants since 1965 vs.
descendants of those who came in the early 20th century and prior would show
that (measuring one, two, three, and four generations out). I could be wrong
and even if the statistics are on my side, there's so many confounding factors
that I'd hesitate to declare victory on that basis.

~~~
foxylad
You're right racial comments are not necessarily wrong, but I think you're
wrong to vote for Trump.

Just to avoid using very loaded words like "racist", I'm going to say I think
we're all "culturist" to varying extents, which means we like people
culturally like ourselves. We use race (or sometimes religion) as a proxy for
this, because it's simpler - note that it tends to be the less articulate who
do this. But actually it's having the same values, the same social habits and
ceremonies and the same language to share them that binds us. Put another way,
a black person who absorbs enough white culture is acceptable enough to be
voted president; and a white person who absorbs black culture (Eminem) is
viewed with suspicion by many white people. It's not the colour - it's the
culture.

If you and I were not culturists, we'd probably look at immigration and say
that there was an optimal size for a society inhabiting a particular part of
the world, and we'd welcome people until we hit the limit. As with any
population, some of those people would be a net drain on our society, and some
would be a net asset.

In fact it's a lot better than that - numerous studies have found that
immigrants tend on average to be far more productive than the population they
are joining, and it makes perfect sense because by definition they had the
vision, energy and resources to leave their old lives behind. I'm guessing you
are a prime example of this. And it is this exact effect that made the US such
a powerhouse - in the early 1900s they absorbed millions of the worlds
brightest and best who then built the miracle that was 1950/60s America. Then
they started putting the breaks on immigration, and... oh dear, the economy is
faltering! Why ever could that be?

So it's generally accepted that immigration is not actually a serious problem,
and it is only the most culturist and least successful members of our society
who think it is because it gives them a convenient excuse for their
circumstances. And any politician that tries to whip up support by shouting
"immigrants are causing all our problems" automatically loses my respect
because the argument is a fallacy, and they know it, but it's the oldest trick
in the book to get the less fortunate to support you.

History is littered with politicians who used immigrants as scapegoats, and in
every case it did not go well. Do you really want to vote for someone using
the same tactics that Fascists used to get into power? And even if you decide
immigration is a big enough issue for you, are you sure you want to support
all his other policies? You really want to waste huge amounts of your
country's resources building a totally ineffective wall? You really want to
start profiling large segments of the population - a favourite tool of the
most repressive regimes in history? And do you really want the US military to
be at the whim of someone who loses his temper when a minor court case goes
against him? You're going to vote for someone who promises he's squeaky clean
but is the only candidate to refuse to release his tax records? Please use (or
don't use) your vote wisely.

~~~
marcoperaza
There's nothing wrong with liking your culture and wanting to preserve it,
with wanting it to succeed. If that makes me a "culturalist" or "culturist" or
whatever, then I'll wear the label proudly. When my family moved to this
country, they decided to become Americans. That doesn't mean abandoning your
heritage, or forgetting it--I love Cuban food, poetry, music, history, and
humor--but it does mean embracing the society you moved to and raising your
children in its values. Some of what we brought will seep into general
American culture, and the rest will be relegated to the history books within a
couple generations. That's the melting pot.

Mass migration to Europe from the Middle East is an unmitigated disaster, even
before the current refugee crisis. France in particular is a good example of
what can really go wrong with unmanaged immigration. You have second and third
generation Muslims becoming _more_ fundamentalist than their parents,
developing incredible animosity toward the rest of France (and receiving it
too). Without pointing fingers at whose fault it is, the French or the
immigrants, it's a total disaster for both. It frankly doesn't matter whose
fault it is, it should have never been allowed to happen. I'm incredibly
alarmed that the left in America is totally and willfully blind to those
risks. They call you racist and shout you down if you dare challenge them.
They're promising to bring in hundreds of thousands of people from the Middle
East. It will be millions if it goes the way of other promises that the
American people have gotten on immigration.

We need to be very careful. We should accept the best and brightest from these
countries. But we cannot repeat the horrible mistake that the Europeans have
made.

Uncontrolled mass migration is new to America. For the first sixty years of
the Republic, there was almost no immigration. Then until the early 1920s,
immigration was mostly restricted to Europeans, who already had a great deal
in common culturally with Americans. Then from the early 20s until the 1965
Immigration Act, there were strict quotas imposed per country-of-origin that
slowed immigration to a trickle. (Though mass _illegal_ immigration does
predate the 1965 act by a few years, I believe.)

> _And it is this exact effect that made the US such a powerhouse - in the
> early 1900s they absorbed millions of the worlds brightest and best who then
> built the miracle that was 1950 /60s America. Then they started putting the
> breaks on immigration, and... oh dear, the economy is faltering! Why ever
> could that be?_

The mass migration from Mexico into the US is not the brightest and most
talented, it's Mexican peasants. There's nothing wrong with being a Mexican
peasant, and I wish the best for them. The ones who are now my countrymen
deserve the same consideration and acceptance as any American. But America
does not need to import millions of peasants. They're a total mismatch for
what our country needs, which is high-skill labor. We have enough low-skill
workers that can't find jobs. I don't see how we benefit from adding more.
Especially people with very low expectations for wages and the employer-
employee relationship. Mexican poverty is Mexico's problem. Why do we need to
make it America's problem too? We have our own problems to solve.

No one thinks the economy is faltering because we're not allowing enough
immigration from Mexico. The idea is frankly a little ridiculous.

It didn't have to be this way. The American people have been making their
views on this uncontrolled migration, on the wink-wink approach to illegal
immigration in particular, very clear for a long time. They were sold a
massive amnesty in 1986 in exchange for increased enforcement. It was a great
humanitarian act, worthy of a great nation. It also ended up being a total and
brazen lie by the politicians. The Democrats are happy to keep importing
voters and the Republicans are happy to importing cheap labor. All while
swindling the people. Time's up.

------
Joeboy
I'd say the core problem here is that people are insufficiently cynical about
plurals. If you see a headline that says "Belgians are going crazy about a
roller-blading echidna", you should be asking "How many Belgians?". If there's
no answer in the article, the answer is "at least two, maybe". Google Trends
is just one of many ways that headline might come to exist.

~~~
ecdavis
"Which Belgians?" is a similarly important question to ask.

I was somewhat surprised by the immediate inference that people searching
"what is the EU?" were people who voted to leave, rather than people who voted
to stay, or people who didn't vote at all.

------
alphydan
I don't see the evidence behind this piece. In the article linked it says:

<< For instance, in the month before the Brexit vote, 8,100 Britons googled
“what is the eu.” That’s around 261 a day. Google Trends showed a huge spike
in searches for that term the day after the referendum; assuming searches for
the term tripled, that’s still fewer than 1,000 individuals googling “what is
the eu” in response to the “Leave” victory. >>

The key is "assuming searches tripled". Did they triple or did they increase
by a 100? All the evidence we get is a line going from zero to a little peak.
But without any scale:

[https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1000/1*mA4iVZVb41M...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1000/1*mA4iVZVb41Mf0bif-
EUCCA.jpeg)

It seems to be 1/3 of the number of searches for "Game of Thrones". Did only
3,000 people search for Game of Thrones?

I went back to google trends and found this:

[http://imgur.com/zwrWEqB](http://imgur.com/zwrWEqB)

On June 24th, people in the UK searched "Game of Thrones" 1.3x as frequently
as "what is the eu". According to Keyword Planner, "Game of Thrones" was
searched in May 2.2M times. Approx: 73,000/day. This _could_ mean that "what
is the eu" was searched 56,000 times.

I like how people get up in arms about the lack of rigour of the _other side_
but forget to check if this piece is likely to be true.

Now, whether it was searched by the "Leave" voters, the "Remain", the foreign
residents or the people who didn't show up at the poll, that's anybody's
guess).

edit: June 24th was a day with few "Game of Thrones" searches. So not likely
one with an average number of searches, i.e. 73,000. Maybe 35,000? The main
point is that everybody accepted the 1,000 searches.

------
joosters
Similar-ish to the cancelled 'Google Flu Trends' project, which tried to
predict flu outbreaks based on search trends. A paper was initially published,
containing fantastic results, but since then the results have not been great:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=289802934)

I like the Google quote at the bottom of the article - ' _...part of the issue
was that they sometimes get a flood of searches simply when there 's a lot of
flu in the news_'.

Who would have thought of that, eh? It apparently took eight years to
discover!

------
marcoperaza
Think about this: the media could concoct this narrative after every single
election if they wanted to. They just chose this time because it suited their
broader narrative. They're trying to tell you what to think and they're
surprisingly effective at it. This should be a wake-up call to thoughtful
people everywhere.

After this sorry debacle, with all of the major media outlets in the West
pushing this ridiculous and spiteful narrative, how can anyone seriously claim
that they aren't totally in the bag of certain political interests, that the
media isn't pushing a particular world view by spreading lies and deception.

------
NetTechM
Well written article! I always find it funny when the media claims a majority
with their wording when in fact it is an extreme minority.

Like those afflicted with H1N1/Bird Flu/zika/ebola etc.. all are dwarfed by
people that die every year from the common flu and yet the news portrays them
as epidemics to drum up viewers for a week or two.

------
flashman
I wrote a script that finds pictures of celebrities mentioned on Google
Trends, and swaps their faces. Here are Jimmy Fallon and Jada Pinkett Smith:
[https://twitter.com/faceswapbot/status/731075094739476481](https://twitter.com/faceswapbot/status/731075094739476481)

Not entirely sure where this falls on the appropriateness spectrum.

------
ohitsdom
Good piece. The conclusion on the Brexit article was ridiculous.

------
joshvm
This is no different from fluff tabloid pieces that say that foods cause
cancer. A typical headline might be "Eating chicken every day increases your
risk of stomach cancer by 50%!"

Unless they specify absolute numbers, this could be a one in 10 million chance
increased to 2.5 in 10 million. Or, it could be 4/10 increased to 6/10.

------
piotrkubisa
Really interesting article, it made me curious how Google Trends would
recognize the searches with "Go" and "Golang" since Google now suggests the
domain of such phrases (Go was recognized as programming language).

As far I know many developers using Go uses "golang" phrase to receive more
precise results in search engine, but Google Trends denies such usage of this
"trick". I made comparison [1] between the "Go", "Golang", "Elixir", "C#" and
I felt pretty amazed that Go phrase is popular the same as C# - I would like
to, but I don't think that can be truth. I really suggest to stop using Google
Trends as a "representable source" which i.e. programming language is better
known (sadly this practice is very popular, even during lectures at
colleges/universities or in various publications).

[1]
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26479102/hn/capture_1.pn...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26479102/hn/capture_1.png)
([https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F09gbxjr%2C%20...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F09gbxjr%2C%20Golang%2C%20%2Fm%2F0pl075p%2C%20C%23&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2))

------
gonedo
very glad this was written -- the sensationalism of it bothered me

------
ixtli
This is the sort of thing that I like to keep around to link to people when
they extrapolate incorrectly from Trends. However the really poor copy editing
honestly makes me reconsider this, as a reader. I think the quality of what
you read reflects on you and quality is a measure composed of many variables.

------
ferdinandvwyk
Guilty as charged _deletes tweets and learns lesson_

------
johansch
And then _Iceland_ beat you. That's gotta hurt.

------
vlunkr
Any statistical information can be used inappropriately, so it's only logical
that it applies to google trends. We seem to be wired as a culture to take
stats at face value, myself included. This is a nice cautionary tale.

------
progval
I believe the “plenty of people” issue is because graphs' vertical scale is
not labelled, other than a percentage of the maximum, which says nothing.

------
jsonne
Thank you very much for writing this. The staggering smugness I saw, and
continue to see, from Reddit threads about how people that voted leave most be
slack jawed morons who don't even know what the EU is made me really
frustrated. Apparently divisive rhetoric and a sane discourse on politics
isn't possible on either side of the aisle (or the Atlantic for that matter.)

------
stirner
> Google [is] the Address Bar of the Internet

Wouldn't the actual address bar be the address bar of the Internet?

~~~
JadeNB
Firefox's Awesome Bar ([https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-
search-fire...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/awesome-bar-search-
firefox-bookmarks-history-tabs)) does its best to blur the distinction. I'm
not sure whether theirs or Chrome's came first, but, of course, Chrome does
its best to make sure that you see no difference between navigating to a
specific address and Googling for it. Certainly I know people who prefer to
enter [company name] rather than www.[company name].com in their address bar,
and for whom the stop through Google (or whatever search engine of choice)
along the way is practically invisible.

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nkrisc
Even if you very much know what the EU is, searching "What is the EU" is
probably a good start to find a resource that does a good job explaining it in
details you didn't yet know.

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hetfeld
Oh,that's really true, but we can just ask random people questions what do
they think about EU.

I think that majority pro-Brexit answers about EU would be: Illegal
immigrants, giving money to Poland and no money for ‎NHS.

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epicaricacy
Obviously, anyone who has ever searched "What is love" really has no clue what
it is. Thus we can conclude that there is a massive population of sociopaths
in our society. /s

~~~
insin
Or that somebody has successfully cloned an army of Haddaways.

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searine
You mean to tell me clickbait media is biased and manipulative?

I'm shocked.

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jbergens
People often compare programming language popularity using Google Trends. It
could be interesting to analyze those queries more deeply.

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cabalamat
Why is Medium blurring out images? It negates the whole point of having
images, i.e. to see them.

