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Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by wehadfun on Thursday September 26, 2013 @03:14PM (#6452952)
It seems to work:

Where is disneyland - Shows a map and has "Get Directions" https://www.google.com/#q=where+is+disneyland

How big is disneyland - 160 acres https://www.google.com/#q=how+big+is+disneyland

Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by alayne on Thursday September 26, 2013 @03:30PM (#6453051)
Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by turing on Thursday September 26, 2013 @06:00PM (#6453909)
That's cool, haven't seen this one before. Thanks for sharing :) Played around with it a bit, and it seems to have pretty good coverage; got everyone from Frederick Douglas to Dijkstra.
Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by riffraff on Thursday September 26, 2013 @03:35PM (#6453083)
yesterday for the first time I noticed the inline translation e.g. "cat in portuguese" -> gato.

Not sure if it's new.

Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by rmckayfleming on Thursday September 26, 2013 @05:09PM (#6453658)
Google has an interesting localization issue when it comes to Canada. If you ask it for someone's height, it gives it in metric, but everyone here uses imperial for body related measurements. The same goes for area, I hear acre a lot more than hectare, but "How big is disneyland" gives me 65ha.
Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by crucini on Thursday September 26, 2013 @10:13PM (#6454868)
There must be a name for this syndrome - tendency of US-based developers to over-exoticize foreign places, taking at face value all official units of measure, languages, etc.
Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by benvd on Friday September 27, 2013 @07:49AM (#6456453)
When it comes to grammar, the term hypercorrection is typically used. Seems like it could be applied here as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

Re:Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algor... by camus on Thursday September 26, 2013 @04:31PM (#6453451)
yep , it works , i tried :"how tall is the eiffet tower?" gave me the result ( ~=324 meters).

"What is PI?" shows me a calculator with the result.