Why do people ask questions that they could Google'd in 30 seconds?

If you googled it correctly, you would have found it has been asked and answered thousands of times.

People ask here because they do not know how to use google, but more likely, they like the human interaction.

With many questions, you are correct. However, a question like "Who was the backup center for the Celtics in 1968?" may take some searching and you may need to go through dozens of web pages in your search. Ask that same question on YA and within 24 hours, you have the exact answer, with no effort from several Celtic fans.

A student working on a paper may ask, "What were the causes of the Civil War?". The google result for that is totally overwhelming. On YA, a brief, clear paragraph that will suit the student's need may be obtained, if lucky.

Think of it this way. Google does not provide answers. Google provides information for a person to determine the answer themselves. On YA, a person tells you the answer directly, no thinking. It works like when you were a kid and you said "Mom, how do you spell xxx?" and Mom said "Look it up in the dictionary !!" Mom if she answered with the spelling was YA, the dictionary is google. Same concept.

This same Q happened yesterday and the Final Answer was 'preference.' I was still writing an answer explainig 'why' the preference when the Q was closed, so here it is:

Keyword: people. Geeks want user interface -- people want human interface. The vast majority of users are people, even if they spend a ton of time on FB/YT/whatever. Humans don't want to 'search,' they want to ask a question and receive an answer.

'In the beginning...' (TM) Y *was* 'the search engine.' People still remember that. Geeks learned about altavista and others, and then G came around, but *people* still used Y.

G has no content. (Yet....) Y was bright enough to build content over the years.

For people, Y has always simply been easier to use. G has an *awesome* geek interface. But it takes *time* to learn how to use "quotes", -"quotes", site:"quotes" and such. In YA, type the words and the answers are right there. Most people don't want to become geeks. Of course they've all

*heard* about G, and probably used it, but to get information out of it efficiently is -not- that easy.

I did a G search the other day and the first two hits came up with 'this site may harm your computer' warnings. Many (most?) people won't see that and step on a rattlesnake. Others may think 'well if it's gonna harm me, why is G showing it to me as the highest scored links?' They're suspicious. Identity theft is rampant, in the news every day. They *know* what it costs to have their PC repaired. In that sense Y is a *safer* place to hang out than G.

One Q I couldn't easily find an answer for was 'how many people have changed their home page to something else other than the original default, and kept it that way?' From experience with friends I expect that % is rather low. AT&T pulled a rather brilliant move by dropping content management and

handing it to Y. With that Y got a duckload of new users. Everything on the AT&T home page is Y based. So, when a user 'asks a question' in the default search box, eventually they'll land in YA. Again, because G has no content. Because they're already logged into AT&T, they're automatically logged into Y. Or maybe have to type user name/password, but it's they're AT&T password, not a 'separate' Y thing.

OK that's enough, just observations based on experience going back to NN1.1, and years more PC networking/communication before that.

Deimos, Phobos, Bottomos: again, the net is about people not geeks, and Y is for people while G is for geeks.

People like getting answers from real live human beings instead of 1,940,000 hits in 0.9 seconds on Google search page. Some people have NO IDEA of proper search terms. I've been using Google a VERY LONG TIME, whenever the University of Oklahoma put it on the library system computer network. That was in in 1993 or 1994.

I think it's easy access. I sometimes do ask questions like that, esp if I'm doing research on a topic and several sites give me confusing things. This place usually helps narrow down what you want to research about your topic.

This question makes absolutely no sense.

Maybe they like talking to another idiot.

in this day and age everyones lazy...

you should try googling it again :p

-z

DAMMIT, Should have googled it.. XD