Google Gemini is My Personal Shopper

By Cecilia Sepp, CAE, ACNP, LPEC

While I love the internet and all the great things it does for us from connection to other people to access to information, I accept the fact that it is also a huge online shopping mall. 

If you shop like I do, you are using online services from Amazon to Stitch Fix that present an overwhelming number of options that you can choose from, and then have sent to your house. It’s the way I have always preferred to shop, because before the internet, I used catalogs. 

Yes, dear reader, I was one of those people who would review the catalog, fill out the order form, write a check, and then mail it to the company. I would wait several weeks for the items to arrive and then I would send them back if they weren’t exactly what I wanted. 

Those days of delayed gratification are gone now that we can buy online with our credit card, and get things shipped to us within a week. We can also find pretty much anything we want in the size, color, and material we want. It’s not often you have to return things anymore. I love that the supply lines and delivery services have improved so dramatically, although I do sometimes miss the anticipation of waiting for a shipment. 

Like many things, the internet presents us with unintended consequences. For example, the number of websites is astronomical. According to Internet Live Stats, “there are over 1.5 billion websites on the world wide web today. Of these, less than 200 million are active.” Multiply that 200 million by 3 and you get 600 million web pages to review. When you consider most websites have more than 5 pages, it makes you dizzy thinking about it. 

Since there are no “internet police” reviewing the content and information on these pages, we have an unintended consequence of potentially low quality and inaccurate information. This brings us to another unintended consequence: how much time we need to invest in finding quality, accurate information. Are you missing your Encyclopedia Britannica about now? I know I do because reference books, like encyclopedias, were fact checked for accuracy and reviewed regularly. 

Today, you can set up a website quickly and for not a lot of money. No one is vetting the content except the creator so lots of unusual and discredited theories abound. Unfortunately, these can be made to seem factual and research based even when they aren’t. My favorite example is the Flat Earth Theory; even the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks knew the world was round because if it wasn’t, ships would fall off the edge. Oh, and by the way, they used observation and study to track the movement of the sun and the stars that supported the finding that the Earth is round. When we finally made it into space and visited the Moon, we had photographic and video proof of a round Earth. 

But wait! There are so many online platforms promoting the theory that the Moon landing was faked that Google Gemini cannot even find an estimate. Another unintended consequence: denial of facts that are proven repeatedly. 

This is why Truth and Facts are very different things. While it can mean honesty, truth is also something like a feeling or a belief. “My truth” is often used to describe personal views of the world and our place in it. Facts, on the other hand, are quantifiable and identifiable. They can be observed by everyone. But that’s when we start down the murky road of interpretation. 

Which is why on most days, I use Google Gemini as my personal shopper. Remember way back at the beginning of this article I mentioned online shopping? Let’s face it: the economy is full of so many products that it can be difficult to find what you are looking for whether it is clothing or pots for your indoor plants. When you know exactly what you are looking for and can’t find it yourself, you can type all your requirements into Google Gemini and ask it to find products that fit your criteria. 

What would have taken you hours or maybe days to find, Google Gemini can collect in a list in just minutes. I recently used this tool to find a big pot for my 20-year-old ficus tree. It found multiple options at multiple sellers almost instantly. All were valid websites (at least the ones I checked) and the products were within the search parameters I set. 

If Google Gemini could find all the accurate, validated, reviewed, and confirmed information in the marketplace of ideas, the world would definitely be a better place. That would be a personal shopper making a real difference in our lives.