Google can help in an emergency, with the right keyword!
Google announced in this blog post they have added two telephone numbers that will appear at the top of some Australian Search results for either Lifeline (suicide counselling service) or the Poison Information Service.
While this is no doubt helpful, I did some quick testing and the special numbers do appear for general terms surrounding "suicide" and "poison information centre" – however, I tried several combinations that I would have thought someone might also use like "kill myself" and "poison help" and neither of these displayed the numbers.
Okay, so Google can't cater for every situation, but there is a real danger here of trying to get a search engine to specifically deal with looking up phone numbers, which is a much more specific task – and some would argue, outside the scope of what a search engine should be providing.
Time will tell, let's hope it saves as many lives as possible, for the people who can type the right keyword!
Michael McKinnon - People | Technology | Cyber Security 