Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Denmark is a Prison

The Autocomplete Map is an interactive map on which all country place-name labels have been changed to show Google's autocomplete suggestions when you type "(country name) is ....". For example when you type "China is ... " into Google the search engine suggests "China is a sleeping giant". The map also includes Google's autocomplete suggestions for U.S. states.

Google's autocomplete suggestions are based on the previous searches by other users. In other words the autocomplete suggestions are what most users type into Google search. There are a few general trends in Google's suggestions. Worryingly many of Google's suggestions are based on a very poor knowledge of geography. In this category we have 'Chile is in Europe', 'Mexico is in South America', 'Morocco is in Europe', 'Malaysia is EU country' and 'Israel is Europe'.

Another trend is to suggest that a country is dying, dead or over. In this category we have 'Japan is dying', 'Belarus is dead', 'South Africa is finished', 'Colorado is ruined', 'Illinois is doomed' and 'Connecticut is dying'. Not in this category, but possibly related, are 'New Zealand is depressing', 'California is going down' and 'Bangladesh is sinking'.

Among my favorite surreal answers are 'France is Bacon' (presumably mistypings of 'Francis Bacon'), 'Chad is on the snoop' (from a children's TV program) and  'Germany is dancing on a volcano' (a 1938 film).

Methodology: The autocomplete suggestions used on the map are based on searching Google in England. You may get other suggestions depending on which country you search in. I have tried to use the top autocomplete suggestion - except where the suggestions are too repetitive (for example '(country name) is safe' appears as the first suggestion for many, many countries). I may also have ignored the top autocomplete suggestion when another suggestion was more interesting. If a country is missing from the map then it is probably because Google had no interesting autocomplete suggestions for that country.

No comments: