Yahoo Search downgrades service.

Yahoo Search has downgraded its service. Oddly, for a tech company, it has, instead of forever advancing its offering, to entice new customers, and keep old ones, decided to reduce its standard search offering, to all.

Until a few days ago, Yahoo Search offered a very useful service, to anyone who used its search box: any search term would evoke an offering to "explore related concepts". This was, I thought, a marvellous tool. Entering anyone's name, for instance, would instantly suggest to you, other matters that this person is somehow related to, through being mentioned in those contexts on the internet. It was very useful for getting an overall picture of anyone or anything. Now, however, Yahoo Search has decided that there are two types of people: the famous ones, and the "little people" who must be sidelined and ignored, like the uninteresting, pointless people they are - or at least Yahoo Search thinks they are.

You are free to check your name, in Yahoo Search, if you wish. However, unless you are a globally famous person, you will, at most, just receive the list on the left hand side of common searches related to you. There will be no suggestion, any longer, of "related concepts" to explore.

I find this a puzzling decision by Yahoo Search. You see, the internet is eminently suited to compiling interesting information on everything - and that means even relatively obscure matters - and not just the "blockbuster" topics. In redefining what its computers will now look for related concepts, to, Yahoo Search, is making it clear that it considers anyone or anything less than a "blockbuster" topic, as unimportant, and inconsequential. This is a key strategic error and shows that Yahoo Search fails to understand the realities of the modern world. You see the number of non-blockbuster topics and not so famous people is SO inordinately greater than the blockbuster topics and the globally famous people, that the total interest and search volume in the more "minor" topics will, in aggregate, be much greater than that of the blockbuster topics. Thus, Yahoo Search is closing access to its searchers, to the information that many of them actually want. It is making the mistake of thinking in an old paradigm.

Perhaps it is costly to devote the necessary computer resources to defining related concepts for everything...but I think that the true cost is neglibible compared to the additional traffic I am fairly sure this service has been drawing to Yahoo Search. Yahoo must weigh against that computing cost, the loss of regular searchers that will develop as people come to realize that they have downgraded their service.

So, Yahoo, if you ever read this blog: why not put back your "explore related concepts" search service, for ALL searches, and not just very famous people. Frankly, very famous people are not as interesting, anyway, as somewhat less famous people, for the simple reason that information is more accessible for the most famous anyway. It is the somewhat less famous, but interesting, people, that we need search engines to find out more about for us. So, too, for the more obscure topics in life and learning.

Then again, there is another angle. Yahoo Search has unwittingly insulted the hundreds of millions of surfers, whose names used to summon related concepts, but who now do not. Yahoo Search has made it clear that it considers these hundreds of millions of people, unimportant - and beneath acknowledgement. Perhaps, in response, some of these people - which may number in millions - may decide that other search engines, serve their needs better and show more respect, by being less divisive and exclusive.

So, come on, Yahoo Search: be fair to all people and concepts, not just the famous. The best search service would be the one that offered the most "related concepts" type responses...because that makes search easiest. You used to offer such a service...so why not offer it again? I think you will find that people actually liked the service - and valued it.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
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Was Winston Churchill real?

You might think this a funny question. However, it was a question that was asked of 3,000 Britons recently in a survey by UKTV Gold, of their tv viewers.

In the survey, the viewers were asked to judge whether various people were real or fictional. You might think this a simple enough task - but it proved to be rather more difficult than you might expect.

23% of the respondents thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. You read that correctly - almost a quarter of Britons don't believe Winston Churchill actually existed. They think someone made him up.

Even more intriguingly, 58% of them thought that Sherlock Holmes, the fictional, pipe-smoking, superhuman detective of Arthur Conan Doyle, was a real, formerly living, detective.

I found this profoundly odd. It means that Britons today are more prepared to believe that a work of fiction was real, than that the wartime Prime Minister of Britain, ever existed. It means that, for them, television (through which they no doubt encountered Sherlock Holmes) was greater proof of existence, than a permanent place in the history books.

There is more. 47% of them thought that Richard the Lionheart - the 12th Century crusading King - was a fictional monarch. Even more curiously, 65% of them thought that King Arthur (for whom there is basically no tangible evidence) was a real man who led a round table of Knights at Camelot.

Thus to have been a great King, is less likely to win believers in one's existence, than to have been a great story.

Florence Nightingale never existed, according to 27% of Britons. That is some thanks for all her nursing efforts in the Crimean War.

However, music is so powerful that it has conjured Eleanor Rigby into existence for the 47% of respondents who believe in her reality. She was, of course, a creation of the Beatles to make a musical point.

3% thought that the famed author Charles Dickens was himself a work of fiction. However, 33% of the very same people thought that Biggles, the fictional pilot of W.E Johns, really flew.

The top ten list of generally held fictions, that were actually believed to be real is as follows:

1) King Arthur.
2) Sherlock Holmes.
3) Robin Hood.
4) Eleanor Rigby.
5) Mona Lisa.
6) Dick Turpin.
7) Biggles.
8) The Three Musketeers.
9) Lady Godiva.
10) Robinson Crusoe.

The top ten list of real people who were thought to be fictional creations is:

1) Richard the Lionheart
2) Winston Churchill
3) Florence Nightingale
4) Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
5) Queen Boadicea
6) Sir Walter Raleigh
7) Duke of Wellington
8) Cleopatra
9) Mahatma Gandhi
10) Charles Dickens

Education is not what it should be in many parts of the world (perhaps all). Clearly, in Britain today - and for some time - education is not fulfilling its purpose of giving people an understanding of the world. Britons today, as this survey shows, quite often cannot tell fiction from reality. They don't know what the real world is - or has been. How, then, can they make realistic decisions in this world, when they don't even know what is real and what is not?

Looking at the fictional characters that they thought were real, I am struck by how unlikely it seems that they could have thought them real. There is something impossible about most of them. Yet, they were believed to be real.

Of course, there are a couple of questionable entries in the "fiction" list which blurs matters somewhat. Someone really did sit for Leonardo da Vinci, to be painted - and her name was Lisa, so perhaps we can discount that one. (Even if the painting wasn't true to her - we will never know). Also, there really was a "Dick Turpin". Unfortunately, he wasn't the one who did what was attributed to him - so in that sense it was fictional. These exceptions aside, however, it is all rather worrying.

Most of the viewers will be young people. What kind of world will they create when they become the backbone of their society? Clearly, they are poorly educated - and perhaps even not very bright as well.

It doesn't forbode well for the UK. However, other nations were not surveyed: would they similarly come off poorly? Is this a global problem for our poorly educated global youth? I rather hope it is not. I would like to think that, in most countries, the young people could tell the difference between a book (ie. Great Expectations) and its author (Charles Dickens). At the very least they should know which one speaks of people who really existed.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)