Google Gaydar: A Solution Without a Problem

Google Weighs in on Celebs' Sexual Orientation

Google amasses tremendous amounts of data, and often does useful things with it. Often, but not always. Case in point: a feature that can only be called Google Gaydar, which, when faced with questions like "Is John Travolta Gay?" or whatever, attempts to answer, AskJeeves style, with a complete sentence.

The example shown below is an easy one, since Neil Patrick Harris is openly gay. Google doesn't have an answer for most celebs, but for those whose sexuality is queried (as it were) the most.

However, note that Google has no answer for the two celebrities whose sexuality is the most often debated: John Travolta and Tom Cruise.

Google Gaydar also had no answer to "Is the Top Gun volleyball scene gay?", but that's beside the point, which is that a search engine is neither equipped nor an appropriate outlet for the announcement or speculation of celebrities' sexual orientations. That's what Twitter is for.

The correct answer to these queries is, "It doesn't matter. You'll never date Jodie Foster/Anderson Cooper/Jake Gyllenhaal/James Franco anyway, so forget about it."

We don't understand why even one second of development time would be dedicated to a "gaydar" feature. The results either confirm what is already common knowledge or leave the question open, ignoring the fact that it's 2011 and we shouldn't even give a damn anyway.

(via Gawker)

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Google Gaydar: Neil Patrick Harris

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