Privacy vs. Service

I posted a text scrap from an article about Google's invasion of privacy, which at first seemed a bit disturbing - but as I thought about it, it makes perfect sense that, in order to provide good answers to a search query, it's necessary to know not merely the question, but the querent.

The specific example the author provided was searching for "restaurant between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe." The chief problem with search is that it very often gives you a long list of results that are entirely satisfactory. Considering this very example, a raw list of every restaurant between two points on a map is all you could get based on the question - and you would then need to filter through them yourself, guessing by the names which might be satisfactory, then clicking through to read more to discover whether they are acceptable. It takes a lot of work - which may be OK for some things, but using a mobile device to get a restaurant reservation shouldn't result in a list that gives you a 30-minute chore of sifting through "matches" that don't really match.

And so, to provide a specific answer to that question, Google needs to know what route you're driving, when you'll set out, what kinds of restaurants/cuisine you prefer, whether you have any religious or medical dietary restrictions, how much you prefer to spend on a meal, and the tastes/preferences of other people in your vehicle. This means snooping into your behavior, your medical records, your religious beliefs, your finances, and your associations to other people.

It's a bit disturbing ... at first. But pause to consider this: if someone were to ask you that same question, would you not need the same information to give them a good answer?

• What route are you driving and when will you set out? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that are not along the way, or that they would pass at an inconvenient time or a t a time a given place is closed.
• What cuisines do you prefer? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that the querent would not consider because he doesn't like the food they serve.
• Do you have any religious/medical dietary restrictions? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that don't serve anything the querent can eat for these very reasons.
• How much do you prefer to spend on a meal? If you do not know this, you might suggest restaurants that the querent would not consider because he feels they are too expensive.
• What are the preferences of your fellow travellers? If you do not ask this, you might suggest a restaurant that the querent likes, but that would be objectionable

If you can think of a way to give an unknown person a good recommendation without all of this information, I'm sure Google (and many others) would love to hear from you - but I don't think it can be done. Leave out any of these details, and you're going to give a bad answer.

Arguably, it's because the querent asked you a vague question. An alternate solution would be for people to learn to ask more specific questions that provide the information that the system needs to give them a specific and appropriate answer. So rather than seeking a "restaurant between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe," the querent would have to ask for a "restaurant near Roseville CA that is open for lunch that serves anything except Mexican or Vietnamese cuisine and has Kosher, vegetarian, and gluten-free options and costs under $15 per person."

Search engines have tried, unsuccessfully, to get people to do that for years, using long queries and Boolean flags to ask a very specific question in order to get an appropriate answer - and the long list of results is the user's fault. But most people can't be bothered to do that, and even those that do tend to forget details that they do not realize were relevant until they get a bad answer and end up searching multiple times to get to a list of appropriate options - and because they didn't get a specific answer to a vague question, it's the search engine's fault.

A lot of work is being done, and will continue to be done, to find a solution. It is, as with many issues, a matter of balance between having enough information to give a good answer (how much does a given person spend on lunch art a restaurant) without being too intrusive (upload your tax returns for the past five years so I can figure out how much you're likely to be willing to spend).

The path to arriving at that happy place is not to stop everything immediately, but to continue the trial-and-error process until both sides get it right.