You have mixed two ways to "ask a question." A search query against Google is one way to ask a question.

You have mixed two ways to "ask a question." A search query against Google is one way to ask a question. Stack Overflow supports the same method, through the search box in the upper right hand corner. In both cases you are free to ask the same question many times per day, though I suspect in both cases if you automate it and ask it once every second then you might get throttled or shut off. This is possible because the machine costs to answer this sort of question is low. Stack Overflow also has a way to post a new question, which may have supporting documentation, etc. Google does not have a way to ask that sort of question, in part no doubt because it requires human understanding to answer that type of question. It's not useful to treat both ways of asking a question as being identical. Stack Overflow depends on a lot of volunteer labor. These are people who would rather not answer the same question over and over again. It's possible to pay people to do tedious work, but that would likely be too expensive for their business model. When I was a kid, before Google Search, there were automated systems like time and temperature; a free number to call which would report the time. There was no limit to how often someone could call it. NASA also had a free number to see when the next launch would be, also answered by machine. And of course even further back still, church clocks are a machine resource so people can tell the time. It's acceptable for someone to look at a timepiece every few minutes, but not to ask people for the time at that same frequency. It comes down to that we treat machines as mindless, unfeeling automata. It's also acceptable to drive a car without doing any maintenance until it breaks, but do the same with a horse and it's animal cruelty.

Posted by dalke on Feb 6, 2015, 1:44 AM

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• pricing (EdTech)

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