Mar 20
Dumbass of the Week: Google
Oooh you're back! Lookin good. Have you lost weight? Yes, that was a compliment designed to butter you up for my next question. Subscribed to my feed yet? :-)
At first, I was delighted to see Google’s new logo (pictured) when I logged into Google New Zealand today. After all, the logo is designed by Eric Carle, author of my son’s favorite book The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
I thought maybe the logo was in celebration of the book’s 40th anniversary. But instead the logo IMG Attribute reads “First Day of Fall” and links to a Google search results page for that phrase.
Nothing wrong with that you say? Sure. If you happen to live in North America where the term *Fall* is almost exclusively used. Here in the Southern Hemisphere and other parts of the world, we use the term *Autumn* to describe the season that transitions Summer to Winter. Heck, even if you look up the term Fall on Wikipedia it takes you to their definition of Autumn.
If you look at the actual search results that the logo links to, they’re not even relevant to the Southern Hemisphere. They all discuss the first day of Fall as it applies to North America or else the March Equinox. According to Twitter buddy Roy Britten, they didn’t even get the Autumn Equinox date right. As Massey University states, Autumn Equinox occurs tomorrow, March 21.
Now if today had been the first day of *Fall* in the Northern Hemisphere and Google had used that logo, I would have overlooked the matter. But to produce a special logo for their regional sites that has no relevance to persons who actually use those sites screams cultural insensitivity to me. Am I wrong?
For a company that boasts so many employees with MBAs and PhDs, this is an embarrassment. That’s why I’m crowning Google: DUMBASS OF THE WEEK.
From the corporate page of Google New Zealand:
“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
I think they left two words off the end of that sentence: “to Americans”.
Update 1: According to Twitter buddy Alan Perkins, Google.co.uk is also sporting a Eric Carle logo, with the alt text reading “First day of Spring”. Click on the logo and you’ll be taken to Google search results for that phrase, with the first listing announcing March 1 being the first day of Spring. Huh? Seems there is some confusion over the official date that Spring starts and Vernal Equinox. But don’t worry, Google has overuled that.
Update 2: I must have more influence than I thought. Mike Cochrane just informed me that Google New Zealand has CHANGED their alt tag to read “First Day of Autumn”. Good onya Google! Would be nice to see a “we were wrong” post though.
Update 3: Apparently, Google New Zealand made the change after noticing the error early this morning (see comments below left by Annie Baxter of Google NZ). Riiigggghhht. Well I’m just glad it’s fixed.
Update 4: Just spotted by Twitter user RiddlerMusic, the caterpillar logo used on Google.co.uk now links to search results for Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar instead of “First day of Spring”. The logo alt text remains the same and other regional domains still link to the Spring/Autumn SERPs. Perhaps this is due to the confusion over the official start date of the Vernal Equinox as mentioned above. Coincidence? Hmmmm
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March 20th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Awesome! I was running out of random things to be angry about!
March 20th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
@Miranda LOL. I wish I could say I was running out of Dumbasses
March 20th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Good spotting! We realised early this morning that the text should read ‘Autumn’ instead and made the change as soon as we could – if you check back now, you’ll see it has been corrected.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
nice one!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar was a fav of mine too back in the day…
March 20th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
@Google New Zealand – thanks for the acknowledgement Annie. Had GG Australia also noticed?
March 20th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Reminds me of what I recall was Windows 3.1 (or maybe OS/2). After giving me a map of the world to choose my location and time zone from, it offered a checkbox for “Would you like to observe daylight saving from March to September?”. Sigh!
March 20th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
At Ses San Jose’s Google Dance they always order too many small and medium tshirts and not enough XL’s. You’d think they’d know all of the world’s sizes! Not.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
@allister lucky we’re patient eh?
@David Well, that’s probably a little unfair LOL.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:04 am
[...] Jordan found, Google New Zealand accidently linked the result to the “First Day of Fall”. She called [...]
March 21st, 2009 at 1:07 am
lol. I love Miranda’s comment. I’m glad Google paid attention to this, it’s no small thing – especially given the influence they have. Details matter.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:27 am
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to go so far as to call google culturally insensitive. Do you really think the alt tag for an image was run by all the MBAs and Ph.D’s? It’s quite obvious this was just an oversight, and they fixed it once alerted. Poor little sensitive kiwis bruise easily I guess…
March 21st, 2009 at 9:21 am
@Ron As I said on the Sphinn post – it’s like the equivalent of promoting a Queen’s birthday logo on Google.com. The large majority of Americans don’t celebrate the British Queen’s birthday. It has absolutely no relevance to them. It would confuse people and I’d bet there’d be lots of complaints. Like Kat said, it’s no small thing for a company with the influence of Google. They obviously agreed as they changed it quick smart. BTW, I’m Australian, not a Kiwi. But never mind, assumptions about the Southern Hemisphere happen ALL the time
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:27 am
Yes, I agree and see your point. I am in MI USA and we say Fall. I think that the links that Google posts at the top of their pages like that should link to a search for example to:’first day of fall, first day of autumn’ so that it is more inclusive.
If they really want to get it right they should have the link query a DB for the correct or several correct phrases for your region. I mean what is Autumn/Fall in Polish?
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Oops. Our bad.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:17 am
[...] The vast majority of attendees that I ran into were from Europe. That is exactly what you would expect, but it still took a bit of adjustment as I have a very ”USA-centric” worldview. Apparently I am not alone in this, mighty search engine Google skews USA as well. Consider the recent logo and link that Google placed onto Google New Zealand to note the arrival of Fall in that hemisphere. Pretty normal, right? Well, not exactly as the term ”Fall” which was used in the logo and the link is used almost exclusively in the USA. The correct term down under is ”Autumn” and yields distinctly different search results. You can see how this was an affront to the local audience and points out Google’s USA-centric worldview by reading this blog post on the subject. [...]
March 26th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
So now E for effort huh? Lol…