fer fuck's sake... Google would NOT have caught mis-spelling the pants bomber

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

BEGIN PET PEEVE RANT

Guest on Ed Shutltz is the zillionth person to note that had the state department googled the pants-bomber's name when they mis-spelled it by a letter when running a check Google would have suggested the right spelling.

This is how deeply stupid things that "everyone knows" get started.

Our government could make good use of some googlish software. True.

Checking a lengthy and difficult name once is insufficient because it's easy to mis-type and many names have variants. True.

But I promise you that when the pants-bomber's father visited the American embassy in Nigeria, had the personnel there Googled the pants-bomber name with one letter missing Google would not have suggested the correct spelling...

Because the kid's name had not appeared in 5,000 news articles yet!

Google isn't psychic. It is clever. If ten thousand people search for AZBLOOGEANT and you type in AZBLOOGEONT Google will ask, "Do you mean AZBLOOGEANT?"

It's a fricking computer program. It doesn't know what these words mean. It doesn't know in advance who might be a terrorist and how their name is spelled.

END PET PEEVE RANT