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Dumb Google
July 06, 2005
If Google's so smart, why are its ad links so stupid? I noticed this morning that one of the Ad Sense links in the Google box on this page read "Sexy Girls & Sexy Guys." That seemed kind of odd, given the depressingly nonerotic content of this blog, but then I realized that in a silly aside in my last post I used the word "thong." Bingo. Such mismatches aren't unusual for Google's much-vaunted ad-serving service. In fact, it often seems almost entirely blind to context - like an idiot savant. That's a vulnerability someone should exploit.
Advertisement: Coming this spring: Nicholas Carr's new book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Preorder now from Amazon.
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Nick's next book:
Nick's latest book:
"Future Shock for the web-apps era" -Fast Company
"Ominously prescient" -Kirkus Reviews
"Riveting stuff" -New York Post
Greatest hits
Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians
The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock's avatar
Flight of the wingless coffin fly
Other writing
The end of corporate computing
Nick's first book:
Order from Amazon
Visit book site