You may not care much what J.R.R. Tolkien said about the pointedness of Elvish ears. In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien himself didn’t care much about the pointedness of Elvish ears, as Tolkien Elves don’t have pointy ears. There is no story written by (much less published by) J.R.R. Tolkien in which he described his Elves as having pointed ears.
As you’ll see from the picture above Google has conveniently omitted that fact from its latest search results, which are supposedly improved over past search results. People look to Google for reliable, accurate, truthful answers to questions.
A question about the pointyness of Elvish ears isn’t very important. But there are many other questions that people ask Google where their lives may be on the line. For example, if you ask Google “is it safe to drink 3 gallons of water a day”, it will cite a portion of a Vice article that says some people can drink up to 3 gallons of water a day. In fact, drinking that much water can kill you. It only takes about half a gallon of water to kill some people (through water toxicity, not drowning).
If you search Bing or Google about water toxicity they’ll tell you that deaths caused by this condition are “rare”. Well, so is getting trampled to death by an elephant but it happens – mostly to people who get too close to elephants. Those of who stand at a safe distance from elephants or never go near them don’t have anything to worry about from elephants (unless we’re unfortunately in the path of a herd of stampeding elephants). By the same token, most of us don’t have to worry about dying from water toxicity because we’re not going to drink that much water at a time.
Google’s problem with simple, basic facts predates the March 5, 2024 algorithm update. I’ve filed numerous feedback reports in Google’s search results over the past few months as the bullshit answers to various questions have piled up.
It’s easy for me to spot the crap search results in some queries because I use them to test Google’s reliability. On March 4 (one day before Google announced this latest update) I told 2 Googlers about another Tolkien query where the answer is complete bullshit. In fact, the question I asked Google (“why did Frodo leave the Shire?”) is a trick question – because Frodo left the Shire TWICE: once to take the Ring to Rivendell (and eventually to Mordor) and once to leave Middle-earth and the Shire forever.
On neither occasion did Frodo leave the Shire “due to lasting physical injuries”. He didn’t not receive any such injuries on his journey to Mordor. He was healed in body. Nor did he sail over Sea to be cured of fatal wounds. Frodo left the Shire and Middle-earth to be spiritually healed before he died. That’s an indisputable explanation provided by J.R.R. Tolkien himself in one of his letters.
Google fares only slightly better if you ask it about recent history (like “was the 2020 election rigged?”). Technically, Donald Trump did seek to rig the election in 6 states with his false electors scheme. He’ll go down in history as the only American Presidential candidate to rig an election and still lose (because his own political party at the state levels ran fair elections in spite of his attempts to corrupt the process).
Now, admittedly, few if any people have described the 2020 election the way I just did. Maybe I’m the only person on the Internet to ever use those words. I hope not because I think it’s important for people to realize just how incompetent Donald Trump is. He promised he would lead his followers to the Capitol on January 6 but neglected to clear that with the Secret Service, who insisted on driving him back to the White House that day. According to testimony given to the January 6 committee, Trump supposedly attacked the driver of his limousine when he realized he wasn’t going to lead his revolution in person.
Google won’t tell you that Trump tried to rig the election. It will obliquely tell you about Trump’s election lies, but if you ask it bluntly “did Donald Trump try to rig the 2020 election” you won’t (as of the time I write this) tell you about the fake electors scheme.
Not every Google search result is answered with bullshit or misdirection. If I ask “is the Earth round like a ball” Google correctly tells me that the Earth – like other planets – is a sphere. So that’s good. Kids researching basic science questions for school projects may still have some hope of getting the answers right (if they’re using Google to check their facts).
No one may care much if Google is wrong about Tolkien Elves, but the real problem here is that the algorithms may be picking the wrong answers from sources that could have the correct information. I’ve seen this in numerous search results, where a Featured Snippet (the top-most result in the Google search results) pulls an incomplete or incorrect answer from a forum discussion where the full, correct answer is provided.
And for more important questions – like “is Covid deadlier than the flu?” – Google may bury the correct answer below multiple wrong results. Here is what Google shows me as I write this article.
More recent data suggests that for patients older than 65 Covid is still much deadlier than the flu – but for younger patients the disparity in risk is less. However, Covid is not a flu-like virus. It attacks the entire body and can remain in the body for up to 2 years after initial infection according to the latest research.
One would think that Google’s much-vaunted medical algorithms would tell you this. If you didn’t already know to search for it, you’d never see these facts in their search results.
Google can be forgiven providing absurd answers to unlikely questions but science fiction and fantasy writers should be careful about vetting their assumptions through Google searches. For example, did you know it is possible to survive a fall from thousands of feet in the air? It’s happened only a few times. Yet, if you ask Google the search results are likely to tell you that this is impossible. A recent story about surving a 1,000 foot fall isn’t even mentioned. The record height for surviving a fall is 33,000+ feet (according to Wikipedia’s article on Vesna Vulović).
Search engines have never been perfect. Nor should we expect them to be perfect. But there was a time when Google was more reliable than it is today. Hopefully their March 4, 2024 update will fix at least some of these issues. Their updates can return unreliable results while they roll out. Nonetheless, we need to always be careful when using search engines to vet facts. In fact, recent news stories reveal that Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong.
So be careful out there even if you’re only writing fan fiction or trying to win a bar bet. Tolkien Elves don’t have pointy ears regardless of what Google says – and, yes, you can survive a fall from 30,000 feet (but the odds are against you).