In Google’s mock feud with Stephen Colbert over his listed height, the Internet giant has not budged an inch — but it has budged a half-inch.
On Wednesday night’s edition of “The Colbert Report,” Mr. Colbert directed his “Who’s Attacking Me Now?” segment at Google over what he said was inaccurate information in its celebrity profile of him. Search “How tall is Stephen Colbert,” and rather than listing links to other sites, Google directly answered 5 feet 10 inches, which he said was an inch short.
“Some viewers might say, what’s the big deal?” Mr. Colbert said. “I’m 5-11. That’s me, Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe. These are my peers.” Another peer, he noted less excitedly, was Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, who is also listed at 5-11. He demanded that Mr. Page offer “a retraction, an investigation, an apology and a substantial cash settlement.”
Over the weekend, Google changed its answer — slightly. Mr. Colbert’s height was changed to 5 feet 10.5 inches. It also noted that the height converted to “1.79m-ish” in the metric system. Google also inserted comparisons: Conan O’Brien was listed at 6-foot-4, and Mr. Colbert’s lead-in on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, was described simply as “shorter.”
Some might wonder who is asking Google about Stephen Colbert’s height, as opposed to LeBron James’s. Other than Mr. Colbert, that is, who said Wednesday night that he does a Google search on himself each day at 3 p.m. sharp.
View photo
Google search results for Stephen Colbert
Google has lately been trying to increase the direct answers it provides users — presumably in the hope of keeping people on the site longer, so they can see more ads. That appears to be a change in mission from organizing links and makes Google act more like a publisher of information.
As Danny Sullivan explained on his site Marketing Land, “The challenge Google faces is that it really doesn’t ‘know’ anything — it only gets answers from others, and those answers, not vetted by human beings for accuracy, can be wrong.”
Even after a little sleuthing, Mr. Sullivan could not determine where Google got its 5-foot-10 answer for Mr. Colbert’s height. He noted that Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, also listed Mr. Colbert as 5-10 but credited the entertainment site IMDb. Over the weekend, that changed on Bing and IMDb, and Mr. Colbert is listed at 5-11.
And Siri, the iPhone service that answers questions, still lists Mr. Colbert at 5-10.
More From NY Times
- Markets Are Mixed as IBM’s Results Disappoint
- Bits Blog: Amazon Kindle Voyage, a High-End E-Reader That Beats Hardcovers
- Power Up: For South Korea, E-Sports Is National Pastime
- Personal Investing Ideas Strategies
- Arts Entertainment
- Stephen Colbert
