After reading a recent article about the prospects of Abraham Lincoln having a rare genetic disorder that explains his tall height, I decided to do a search on Google to see just how tall the Ex-President was. I typed in "Abraham Lincoln height" and saw that the very first search result was, "Abraham Lincoln - Height: 6’ 3¾" (192 CM) According to..."
Wow. That was easy. Too easy, I thought. I tried another. This time, Andre the Giant. My suspicions were confirmed as the very prominent result of 7 feet was displayed.
At first, this might not seem that cool, but when you think about it, Google is extracting information from web sites and serving up intelligent answers.
UPDATE: It also works on weight, whether they are married and to who (type ‘married’ after name), their hometown or place of birth (type in ‘hometown’ after name), and what nationality they are (type in ‘nationality’ after name).
Google Height Hacks
Discovering the Height of American Icons
Trend Themes
1. Smart Answer Serving - Opportunities for developing more advanced algorithms to extract relevant information from websites and provide intelligent answers to user queries.
2. Personal Attribute Lookup - Potential for creating more expansive search capabilities that allow users to easily find information about individuals' personal attributes, such as height, weight, marital status, hometown, and nationality.
3. Web Data Extraction - Emerging trend of leveraging advanced web scraping techniques to gather and organize data from various websites to deliver comprehensive answers to user queries.
Industry Implications
1. Search Technology - Disruptive innovation opportunities lie in developing enhanced search algorithms and technologies that intelligently extract and serve specific information from websites.
2. Personal Information Services - Opportunities for creating innovative platforms or services that offer personalized information lookup, such as data on personal attributes and background details of individuals.
3. Web Scraping Tools - Potential for developing advanced web scraping tools and software that efficiently extract structured data from diverse websites, enabling the delivery of accurate and relevant information to users.