Just today there were two things I couldn't find with Google:
Finding how/why the lighting switch on a gas stove could cause a (mild) electric shock. I read the first 3/4 pages of results, got one or two very low quality forum postings and that is all. Somebody in the world must have written about this problem, e.g. in a manual for gas repair engineers. Google didn't find it.
Where wild ducklings sleep at night. I found lots of articles about how to look after pet ducklings, which aren't relevant. I found one article about how wild adult ducks sleep at night, although it was in my view of dubious provenance. Nothing about wild ducklings. I spent only a few minutes searching as I was using my mobile phone (in a park), so had higher needs for finding the answer in the first few results than the above.
I suspect that people get different experiences of google according to: a) what kinds of knowledge they tend to search for, b) their skill at using it.
I increasingly find myself using Quora, and asking new questions on it, for the kinds of queries above.
Finding how/why the lighting switch on a gas stove could cause a (mild) electric shock. I read the first 3/4 pages of results, got one or two very low quality forum postings and that is all. Somebody in the world must have written about this problem, e.g. in a manual for gas repair engineers. Google didn't find it.
Where wild ducklings sleep at night. I found lots of articles about how to look after pet ducklings, which aren't relevant. I found one article about how wild adult ducks sleep at night, although it was in my view of dubious provenance. Nothing about wild ducklings. I spent only a few minutes searching as I was using my mobile phone (in a park), so had higher needs for finding the answer in the first few results than the above.
I suspect that people get different experiences of google according to: a) what kinds of knowledge they tend to search for, b) their skill at using it.
I increasingly find myself using Quora, and asking new questions on it, for the kinds of queries above.