What a predictably cynical interpretation. Your immediate reaction to the application of imperfect models to the real world need not be one of distrust as if slighted but rather simple acknowledgment that this is just the best we can currently do.
This is a perfectly concise articulation of my thoughts as well. I will add that it is still good to keep in mind that owners of the models are indeed self-serving, but it does not need to be a cynical thing. Most of the time, the self serving motivation is to simply provide the best service possible
You have a point. Perhaps it's Google users' fault as much as anyone else's, to form such trusting emotional bonds to the Google service in the first place. However:
1. Google doesn't do anything to educate their users about this reality.
2. If corporations like Google really wanted to do "the best we can currently do", they'd try harder but instead they just do "the best we need to do to make billions of dollars from collecting people's data."
Case in point, turns out Yandex image search is better than Google's. Google won't try harder if no one knows there's something better.
> Google doesn't do anything to educate their users about this reality.
What do you propose they do? Have cameras on every street instead? Somehow spend a fortune to embed sensors in to every roadway on earth?
As it turns out, when you aggregate a ton of (hopefully) anonymized data, you can get some really cool shit. Like the "how busy is this business" thing they have for a lot of businesses.
