Ever since the internet became popular and became an indispensable part of our everyday life, Google has been the most favorite of search engines around the world. Whether it is a quick science query, confusion about a historical event, or just random fact-checking, Google has always been the first choice for searching the answers. Also, we would be lying if we refuse to admit that we have, at one time or another, googled ourselves as well.
An engineer in Switzerland did the same harmless act of googling himself and was shocked to see what appeared on the screen. His name is Hristo Georgiev which is also shared by a serial killer. This similarity of the name led to the whole confusion. When he googled his name, the results shown on Google were the details of the serial killer with the engineer Hristo’s picture. This incident left him astonished and he stated he ‘did not know if it was hilarious or terrifying’.
At first, he could not believe what he was seeing. After all, who expects to wake up one day and be misidentified as a notorious serial killer. He opened Wikipedia to confirm the confusion but there was no such information there. That was when he knew that Google has used his picture in place of the serial killer’s. He wrote about this on his personal website, so people know that he is not the criminal Google is saying he is.
Incidents like this are not new for Google. This concern is reported several times and there has been a significant amount of research done on the issue as well. It might serve as a laughing stock for people or the friends of the person but it is actually appalling how slight ups and downs in the Google algorithm can twist reality and present a lie as an obvious truth. After Georgiev posted this on Hacker News, Google resolved the issue and removed his picture.
