Say what about my borough?
We’re all familiar with Google’s autocomplete feature, which offers suggestions to netizens mid-type — often with hilarious or embarrassing results.
And searches about the Big Apple are no exception.
The Daily News has created an interactive map to see what pops up when people type the question, “Why is [name of borough] so…” into Google’s search bar.
For Manhattan, the autocomplete results are “expensive”, “populated,” “dirty” and “dense,” among others.
Those aren’t the adjectives that come to Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer’s mind, who offered a wishful list of how she would describe the island: “eclectic,” “dynamic,” and “full of great neighborhoods.”
Google autocompleted the most positive suggestions for Brooklyn, with the words “cool”, “great”, “famous” and “special” making the top ten and getting close to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams’s Google-search dreams.
“My goal is to see searches on ‘Why is Brooklyn so safe?’, ‘Why is Brooklyn so united?’ and ‘Why is Brooklyn so affordable?'” Adams told the News.
Except for Staten Island and Queens, all the boroughs had “dirty” and “expensive” in their autocomplete lists.
Staten Island Borough President James Oddo wasn’t surprised.
“Staten Island is the cleanest, greenest, safest and most suburban of the five boroughs of New York City,” he said. “It’s a bedroom community with a small town USA feel that will soon be home to one of the hippest, most vibrant and diverse waterfront communities in Gotham.”
Queens Borough President Melinda Katz chose not to comment.
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. described his borough as “interesting, unique and diverse,” — a far cry from the borough’s autocomplete results, which included “ghetto”, “poor”, “bad” and “dangerous.”
“The Bronx has come a long way, crime is down, big companies are doing business here and people from all over the world are moving in, making this borough a melting pot of nationalities.”
As fun as they are, Google warns against reading too much into these adjectives. Questions like “why is Manhattan so” are not likely to be typed by millions of people, even if the search engine is used by billions daily.
Along with word frequency, there are other variables that go into determining the most useful autocompletion. It’s not social commentary, Google said, but a tool for the user.
That doesn’t mean people won’t keep asking.
Augustin Chaintreau, an assistant professor of Computer Science at Columbia University says it’s not unusual for people to talk to search engines like a “best friend,” asking conversational questions.
“We are using these tools almost like black magic,” Chaintreau told the News.
“Even if nobody truly believes that asking Google something like ‘what’s the purpose of my life’ will solve it, people still try.”
