Yahoo! that bastion of freedom, the Fox News of the Internet, that glorifier of consumption and the Democracy of the Dollar, hopes that you never learn the truth. Probably not about anything, I imagine, but most assuredly not about climate change.
As they say, you can learn a lot of things surfing the Net, much of it wrong and most of it useless, but that's your fault. Usually. But say you want to find out the latest on 350.org, the major United States champion of at least going through the motions of trying to save the planet. Well, you had better "google it." Only actual yahoos (guilty) "Yahoo! it," apparently.
Imagining that lots of relatively sane people in the past couple of years might have wanted to find out something about the Bill McKibben-led organization — because we aren't all Stepford People, at least not yet — I typed, very simply (I am good at simple) 350 into my Yahoo! browser.
It gave these ten top search responses, allegedly, for 350: 350z, 350 chevy engine, 350 crate motor, 3500, 350z forum (gee, a forum, that must be important!), 350 turbo transmission, 350 crate engine (for those who don't know what a motor is), 350 chevy firing order (probably something to do with further corporate layoffs), 350 small block and, finally, in case your block is so small you haven't yet gotten the drift of Yahoo!'s amazing allegiance to single-minded helpfulness, 350 chevy motor!
(More surfing lessons below the doohickey)
Well, you ask reasonably, what were the top responses on google? I mean, are you going to do a scientific survey, or are you just here to make a fool of yourself?
Please don't be harsh, I'm just one easily confused old person, a twit who refuses to Twitter. Now, to the simple 350 entry, google gave me: 350.org (see, it does exist!), 350 maine (my state's 350.org chapter, which I promptly joined), 350 engine and, yes, fourth and last, 350 crate engine.
Since the 350 crate engine helped bring about climate change, at least google, in its corporate zeal to "do no evil," has put the horse before the car. Thank you!
For once, you are invited to try this at home.
Although it's difficult in this political environment to see through the red enough to get much beyond pink, I thought I'd give Yahoo! a chance to redeem itself. Instead it got itself only in deeper.
I typed in 350.com, pretending that, not for the first time, I didn't quite know what I was looking for. Surely some algorithm would correct me, sort of help me out, you know, guide me to 350.org, which to me looks much like the same thing. Right? Uh, no, not according to Yahoo!
I got: 350 complete engine, 350 compression ratio, 350 commerce irvine (don't go; there are crowds), 350 compression test and even 350 combos and 350 comedy ringtones and, yes, 350 complete crate motor. Hallelujah for the damned car!
By now, I was beginning to want one of those nifty 350 engines, just to keep running in my yard, to do my duty as a citizen of the most wasteful nation on earth.
Okay, still not really fair, I guess.
So I typed in 350.org. There!
Okay, fine, know what you're looking for, no problem. And it was there — but 350.org was still in disguise, if you ask me. It was first on the list, okay, but as: "350 organization?" No one calls it 350 organization. In fact, I skipped right past the reference, looking for an actual link to 350.org further down — and it wasn't there, although the second "helpful" link was to "350 orgallo in manteca ca," which I took to be a carbon-fighting street address that hopes to save the world despite its complete anonymity and location right next to a ribbon of asphalt. On the list was no direct link to 350.org itself, which is the organization's name, for God's sake, not 350 organization. Heck, even had it said 350.organization even I would have concluded: dot.organization, okay, dot.org. there it is, I suppose. But 350.org has been in the news typed just that way and in thousands of documents that Yahoo! handles millions of times a second. You shouldn't have to put quotes around it to at least get it spit back to you verbatim on the top search list. I can only assume Yahoo!'s attempt to hide its true identity, and particularly the dot.org's mission, is intentional.
And besides, when I, scientist that I am, typed 350.com into the google browser I got these four choices: 350.com, 350.com global warming, 350.com bill mckibben, 350.com login! No Chevys? You ask me, google's being a little overzealous in its protectionism for its own electric car.
Okay, granted, when I grew up we used abacuses or abaci or some device that was so old that it didn't even have an American name. So maybe I'm just dumb. Maybe the algorithms Yahoo! uses in its browser has trouble with numbers and periods? Or maybe Jay Leno has teams of researchers on Yahoo! 24/7 looking up car information, who knows? For whatever reason, Yahoo! has ended up hiding what I thought they were supposed to reveal. (Entirely possible, I guess, somebody educate me.) But if you haven't noticed the rightward drift of Yahoo!'s sellout to all things corporate and consumer, or its News(sic)Max when-did-you-stop-beating-Michelle polls on Obama, or how its top stories always have to do with the 10 most expensive places to live and where to retire so you won't be paying taxes (hint: red states), well, congratulations, you never go to Yahoo! You're smart, I'm dumb, laugh at me. But I say boycott the service. I'm new here, so maybe we already are. Again, educate me.
All I know is, had I been a canary in a coal mine needing info on 350.org fast, or even on 350.com as it turns out, and had I thought it was 350-something, or even 350.com (which it turns out wasn't so dumb after all), and had I browsed with yahoo, well, I wouldn't be alive today to chirp about it.
All of this can't be a simple misunderstanding or algorithm issue, can it? I think they want me uninformed and then dead. You other canaries too.