Google Reports Michael Jackson Died in 2007
Oh dear, Google just isn’t having a good time of it lately is it? Firstly GMail was offline a number of times in March, and now the biggest news story to hit us this year, in the death of Michael Jackson, has been misreported and didn’t even appear in Google News for quite some time.
At first, Google News failed to pick up the story last Thursday as the system interpreted the huge amount of interest in the topic as an attack.
When searching for news of the King of Pop’s death, Google’s top result showed an extract out of Wikipedia revealing that he died in 2007, aged 65.
This report, as bizarre as reports of Wacko Jacko during his life, came about as Wikipedia was showing info on the wrong Michael Jackson. Instead of the moonwalking Thriller performer, Wikipedia put forward Michael Jackson the writer. Yeah, that one.
The reporting issue has now been fixed, but it does raise questions with regards to Google’s algorithms. While it gives a solid performance in delivering relevant results for our search, it still falls short of human intuition that can put these keywords into context a bit more.
Have you had any similar experiences with a Google search? Drop us a comment and let us know.
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Poor old Michael J (the writer), his moment of fame comes after the death of a famous namesake.