The French Now Hate Google Autocomplete
I used to associate the US with crazy lawsuits, like people suing fast food chains because they spilt hot coffee on themselves! Turns out the French are just as mad. The latest such case of French insanity is where a French anti-discrimination organization, SOS Racisme, sued Google for its, hold your breath, autocomplete feature. So what about autocomplete is so offensive to the French? Turns out if you type the names of certain celebrities on Google’s page, autocomplete shows the word “Jew”. The French, of course, are too dumb to know how Google autocomplete (or anything else for that matter) works: - Autocomplete is an algorithm that shows suggestions based on search phrases that the majority of people typed in the past. - Further, autocomplete does localization, i.e., the suggested phrases shown vary from place to place to reflect the popular choice in that region . Now that you under...