back to article Worried you got PINK EYE when you shook hands? Doctor Google will see you now

Data-scraping ad giant Google is to begin serving up what it claims will be more "relevant" search results for netizens who seek information about medical conditions online. Chillingly, once Google users tap their perceived ailments into Mountain View's search engine, the company has promised it will be "easier to do more …

  1. Tromos
    Joke

    A pint of beer every six hours

    Sounds nearer to cold turkey than beefsteak to me.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Stop the world....etc.

    "when my infant son Veer fell off a bed in a hotel in rural Vermont, and I was concerned that he might have a concussion."

    So what you do, if you think you child has a potentially life threatening condition, is to look it up on Google and see that it's ok, he's only got malaria or find that "Little Joey" fell off the bed because it turned out he had a brain tumour or somfink and that like, 300 hundred of her mates yeah, just like, thought Urrrggh it was part of being like a toddler like.

    Hint: if you think you child has a potentially life threatening condition, go to a fucking hospital or at least a doctors.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stop the world....etc.

      OK, fine, but ... I can multitask, you know. While I'm driving to the hospital, I'll just quickly Google for "concussion" on my Google Glass.

      1. Martin Budden Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: Stop the world....etc.

        No you can't (shouldn't) because glassing while driving is DANGEROUS.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Stop the world....etc.

          Sorry - forgot to add the </sarcasm> tag

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kudos for that JKJ ref

    One of the funniest pieces of prose ever written. If any of you haven't read that book, well worth reading.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: Kudos for that JKJ ref

      Just reading your comment had me laughing as I remembered the incident of the comic song.

    2. Stella Duvel

      Re: Kudos for that JKJ ref

      And also to learn from - like the episode of Uncle Podger hanging the picture, a very apt model of government initiatives...achieve very little, involve everyone else and make an unholy mess in the process

    3. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Kudos for that JKJ ref

      And that is just the first couple of pages!

      The narrator just feels a little out of sorts, and so visits the British Library where all human information is available to him (it's easy to see the internet in that). He soon diagnoses himself that he has every ailment known to man or woman - except for Housemaid's Knee. He presents himself to his doctor with "I don't have Housemaids Knee" and the doctor hands him the folded prescription. He only actually reads it after a pharmacist is unable to fulfil it.

      Three Men in a Boat is an ideal book to give your sprogs to show them that the Victorians weren't that different from us.

  4. Dave 126 Silver badge

    I'm just smiling, thinking about the tin incident:

    ...there was no tin-opener to be found. . .I took the tin off myself and hammered at it till I was sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand. We beat it flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every shape known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened.

  5. jake Silver badge

    Is google practicing medicine without a license?

    Just asking.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is google practicing medicine without a license?

      not an issue, they will continue to do it, then our government will just say they don't need one as it's required to be at the centre of this tech.

  6. Graham Marsden
    Happy

    "Doctor Parkinson declared 'I'm not surprised to see you here...

    "...You've got smokers cough from smoking, brewer's droop from drinking beer

    'I don't know how you came to get the Betty Davis knees

    'But worst of all young man you've got Industrial Disease'"

    - Industrial Disease - Dire Straits

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Doctor Parkinson declared 'I'm not surprised to see you here...

      Ahh, the song with the greatest lyric in the history of Western Music: "Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong!"

  7. Alistair

    @GrahamMarsden

    Eggsilent reference. And I'll go off and cue up all my MK tunes - including his remarkable soundtrack work on TPB.

    *WRT the article in question:

    Sadly - I think the lousy references available on Google at this point (now) are at least a particle better than the flock of "GOD will take care of my (kids)/(spouse)/(parent) -- I don' neeeeed no bigFarma munny grubbin ductor to lie to me....." clueless idiots herding about these days. I'm on the border of removing an individual from my social circles completely since he's heading down this path (despite??becauseof??) after surviving cancer and having two open heart surgeries (the second keeping him on this side of the grass). Abundant lack of clue ......

  8. Mark 85

    Stupid Google Tricks

    So does this mean that if I type in "Heart Attack Symptoms" I won't get Viagra ads anymore?

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