While doing a Google search, if I misspell a word, Google typically figures it out and returns results with the word I intended. For example, if I type Striaght Dope, it still suggests results here. It doesn’t say “no results” or only return results where somebody else misspelled it the same way. The same is true for Bing, Duck Duck Go, and presumably others. They are “smart” in this way.
But when I try to do a “find” in other major software like in a document in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat, that software just plays dumb. “No results” is what I typically get. It does a strict search based on exactly what I typed in.
Why the difference?
I can’t imagine it’s an issue of licensing the technology, since at least for the Bing and Word examples, those are both Microsoft products.
I suppose part of it could be the desire to have those programs function without internet access (whereas a Google search without internet access is pointless), but there are features in even these programs that require internet access anyway, like the “help” menu, for example. And they could just as easily only “dumb down” the search technology if internet access was not available.
(There might be a factual answer here, so I thought about putting this in GQ, but since the factual answer might just be “money”, I wanted a little more discussion.)
Reciprocally, if I can type what I mean nearly everywhere I type, why the fuck can’t I disable every goddam attempt to second-guess what I might have meant within stupid ^$!@@! Google Advanced Search, so that it only freaking returns what I actuallly freaking typed?!?!/
In answer to the OP, there’s no reason why searches in word processors shouldn’t work the same way.
It’s not a matter of licensing or internet access, and it would be fairly simple to do. If there are no results for a search then suggest similar words.
My guess is that it’s due to historical reasons. Searches in word processors have always worked in a certain way, and perhaps they think it would be too confusing to users to change it.
No it won’t. It used to. It will come a bit closer than if you don’t but I pretty much always do that automatically, and it still substitutes what it thinks you should have typed, and it includes pages that don’t have your search term for unknown reasons.
Personally, I would find this very annoying. I often use the search to search and destroy spelling mistakes, change bad formatting, etc. I very much prefer that it returns only exactly what I type in.
If Google “corrects” my search (on a desktop), it gives a link to use what I actually typed. Or I can use quotes.
How would I “correct” an autocorrect in a Word search? If I were writing a novel, and searching for a deliberately incorrect word or an oddly-spelled name, it would get difficult. I’m not against the idea, I just want to be able to override it when necessary.
Word processing, i.e., writing, is very different from searching. People that write, authors, journalists, etc., rarely want some algorithm to arbitrarily change what they compose. I agree with keeganst94. I do not want my word processor or text editor interfering, Yes, I mis-type words with regularity. Spell checkers help with spelling cleanup and a decent proofread catches the rest.
To add to the reasons others have provided: plus Google et al. have a ton of constantly evolving data behind those searches. It’s not a technology that lends itself to encapsulation in a desktop program without constant updates.
Would you expect that the search engine behaviour would be different if there were no ads and users paid a subscription fee?
A user typing “Berlijn” is much more likely to want to see results about the city (and they either misspelled the name, or are Dutch) than they are likely to see results about the Los Alamos scientist, so it seems reasonable that the default be the city. The monetization model doesn’t change that.
These are two completely different types of searches, which is why even Google’s own applications have “dumb” searches in the application itself. Sure, you could implement that kind of functionality, but it would mean completely redoing something that works to make it slower and more complicated.
I could live without the feature which corrects misspellings. It hinders more than it helps, has a limited vocabulary and is very unhelpful if not all of your writing is in English. The mistakes like “their/they’re” which you see in bad writing (and everywhere on the Intraweb) remain uncorrected.
But if you liked Clippy, it looks like you’re rationalizing intrusive programming. Can I help? Huh? Pleeeeease?
Maybe. Not consciously. I suppose I have formed an attitude towards Google’s search over the years, and that it’s not a good one, so I guess that makes me predisposed to find something else to gripe about.
For instance, I don’t like the fact that they bring you results that do not have your search terms on them, but which they figure you want to see anyhow because some other damn page that does have your search term links to it somewhere and somehow. It would be okay if you could disable that at will.