Yes, but Google ...

 

Yes, but Google …..

That’s the start of so many sentences that I hear and read, and the prologue to having to explain, over and over, that the mighty Google are as prone to errors and have to follow the same data paradigms as other companies. Google is very good at some of what it does. In other fields it is average or, if I dare blaspheme, it is poor.  Yet Google is constantly being held up as the arbiter of everything that is correct. If Google says it, it must be so. It is the law, even in aspects as esoteric as language translation. In some cases this is just ignorance. In other cases organisations know that Google is wrong, but follow anyway because they make a commercial decision that they cannot go against the direction of the unstoppable machine that is Google.

This is a worrying trend which goes against the dictates of data quality.

Every database contains errors. Every database contains duplicates. Every database. Including Google’s. Google also lack knowledge, or lack the ability or desire to apply knowledge, in many areas. Problems may be the result of poor data management practices, of which Google is the victim just as much as anybody else; and of the perennial and ubiquitous problem of lack of knowledge or lack of motivation to acquire the required knowledge.

Thinking very specifically now of Google Maps, at the time of writing you may see a lot of duplicate information where they have merged sources and been loose with their de-duplication.  That single electric vehicle charge point at my local railway station? Google shows three. Those multiple building numbers on Hawaiian buildings on their maps? Duplication, because Google doesn’t have or apply the available knowledge about their format so doesn’t realise that 91-123, 123 and 91123 are all the same building. The failure of Google to find addresses in the borough of Queens in New York? Again, a failure of knowledge about local variations in address systems. And, more often than not these days, the format of addresses displayed in Google Maps for many countries is demonstrably incorrect for that country.

That’s how things are now, and Google does change things around a lot so these aspects may no longer be an issue as you read this. Instead, other problems will pop up. Because Google makes mistakes, just like anybody else. What really worries me, though, is how people can’t see, or can’t accept, that Google is anything but perfect. Will Google’s errors cause institutions to start formatting addresses the wrong way, because “Google”? I hope not. In the meantime, I shall keep plugging away and explaining, every time I hear “but Google …”, that Google has a long way to go before they reach omnipotence in knowledge and its application. It’s not even close. So, please spare me the “Yes, but Google …”