Wednesday 18 January 2012

Seriously, Amazon?

The other day, a friend of mine told me he’d found a Kindle book which told the story of one of the schools we both attended as young ‘uns. As its cost was less than one of your English pounds, I thought I’d track it down for myself.

I duly logged into Amazon and, as I didn’t know the exact title of the book, I just typed the school’s name - ‘Copthorne’ – into the search box.  I'm happy-go-lucky like that.

The results page is reproduced below. The first three results are eminently sensible, but what’s going on with result number four?!




I'm guessing this masterpiece of cinematography had a director whose name was Copthorne or some such.  I note it's listed as currently unavailable - as if there might be stocks of it in the future.  Can't wait.

I'm tempted to wonder what you'd get if you ask Amazon for 'asian ravers' - a book on 12th Century Ecclesiastical Architecture, perhaps, or a treatise on calculus.

Search engines, gotta love 'em!

8 comments:

  1. All that you didn't want to know about Copthorne!

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  2. What I want to know is, do people actually buy porn on VHS anymore?

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  3. Copthorne was a bit rough and ready, but I didn't realise how much. Buying porn on VHS? Not this particular magnum opus, they're not!

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  4. That was hilarious! Yeah, the algorithms in search engines haven't been perfected just yet, despite the fact that they've been here and trillions have been using them for decades.

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  5. DFTP - Randomness of the internet is an understatement. I wonder if there's a strong word for this.

    Clandestine Samurai - I think search engines have quite a way to go before they can approach the subtilty of the brain, which can take into account context, previous searches, etc.

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