more on Google Books search: the purfuit of gigo

[calimac]

That legendary comedy album, Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America: Volume One The Early Years, has a bit on it where somebody asks Tom Jefferson why he's writing about "the purfuit [pronounced "purfute"] of happiness."

Well, guess what. The Google Books search can't tell the difference between the long s and the letter f either.



This has to be one of the silliest charts I've ever seen. If you're studying the history of typography, it could be great, assuming that the error is consistent. (er, "confiftent") For any other purposes, it could be disastrously misleading. Garbage in, garbage out.

Comments

[mithriltabby]

Ha! Did you send that to the Google team?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Google has googols of smart people. If they can't figure it out, heck with 'em.