Tuesday, February 06, 2024

The final event

Welcome to day four of the Search Engine Olympics. Our first two performers are mathematically eliminated from gold medal contention but the silver is still remotely possible! Everyone else still has a shot at gold. And here's the question for the final round:

In the Harry Potter chronicles is Snape a good guy or bad guy?

ASK.COM: There are seven total “Harry Potter” books. All of the books were published by Scholastic between September 1998 and July 2007. 

Judges: 1.0 / 1.2 / 1.0 / 1.0 / 0.8

Well, it's official. The Askies are morons!

ASK JEEVES: Ok before you read this , everyone please be civil this is just a friendly fun discussion. Let me start by saying this. Ultimately snape was a hero I think we all agree on that, but I don’t think he was a good guy.

Judges: 9.0 / 8.5 / 9.0 / 9.0 / 9.5

Excellent performance, and suddenly the worst team for much of these games has leapt into fourth place for the moment. No medals for Jeeves but they might escape the cellar!

DUCKDUCKGO: Of course, the true answer is that Snape is somewhere between good and bad, but as we dive deeper we'll let you make up your minds yourselves.

Judges: 8.5 / 8.0 / 7.5 / 8.0 / 8.0

Oooh! That was a pretty decent performance by the quackers! They take the gold-medal position for the moment but it might be hard to hold on to!

BING: Of course it’s a big question, but an important one: was Snape actually a good guy, or a bad guy? Is it even possible to measure? Probably not, but let's unpick one of the wizarding world's most textured characters anyway.

Judges: 9.0 / 9.0 / 9.0 / 9.1 / 9.1

Undecisive but right on track and Bing takes the lead with the duckies in second and Yandex third but still to perform today!

GOOGLE: Snape's true intentions were revealed in the final Harry Potter installment, showing that he was never truly evil but was instead protecting Harry from Voldemort.

Judges: 9.0 / 9.5 / 9.5 / 9.8 / 9.7

Oh my! Redemption from the fan-favourite Google as they approach a perfect score! And they leap into the lead and guarantee themselves a medal! Only Yandex and Yahoo could possibly catch them.

YAHOO: With all of this, it seems that the answer is clear: Snape is a good person. Unfortunately, things are a lot more complicated than they appear.

Judges: 9.5 / 9.0 / 9.0 / 9.0 / 8.5

And Yahoo jumps into silver position at 19.0 total, just behind Google at 19.2 and the ducksters have been bumped from medal contention. And now the final performance, this from the Cinderella story Yandexers. At 12.1 after three days, they need a score of just 3.7 to claim the bronze medal, 7.0 for the silver and 7.2 for to snatch the gold from the suddenly-competent Googlers! Here we go:

YANDEX: Severus Snape is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. He is an exceptionally skilled wizard whose extremely cold and resentful exterior conceals deep emotions and anguish. A Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Snape is hostile to Harry due to his resemblance to his father James Potter, who bullied Snape during their time together at Hogwarts.

Judges: 8.0 / 8.0 / 7.9 / 8.3 / 7.8

And they've done it! Yandex took charge on day one and never let go. Gold medal champions! Google disappointed perhaps, with silver and Yahoo with bronze. Thanks for joining us at these inaugural Search Engine Olympic Games! Let's never do this again.

YANDEX  20.1
GOOGLE  19.2
YAHOO!  19.0
BING    15.7
D.D.GO  13.1
JEEVES  9.6
ASK.COM 1.4

And now for the closing ceremonies:


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