I was recently searching up the scientific name for cucumber on my phone with Google, when I noticed something odd:
And then
I noticed
…many other things
…and that this was not limited to my phone.
Apparently Google has decided that all plants are algae.
This is an intriguing development and I am not sure what to make of this. Has anyone else noticed this?
Algae has replaced all plant matter while we weren’t looking.
Ok—it appears not every plant was affected. The cacti escaped unharmed!
Wonder what’s up with that. Were they not “algae” enough?
It doesn’t appear to happen on the mobile version of the site and seems to just affect the homepage, not subsequent searches. Interestingly, Algae is a Plant:
Great news for all plant identifiers! Instead of keying it out, the repository of human knowledge (Google) has now made it simpler, nearly everything is Algae…
Interesting indeed. Although Algae as a grouping is a bit ambiguous.
Taking the word of our great “repository of human knowledge,” as you put it… if what we had considered plants are Algae, and Algae are plants, does that technically still make them plants, in a round-about-way? 
Pointless nit-picking: “algae” is plural, “alga” is singular.
So, for instance, the google results for Pinus above imply to me not that Pinus thunbergii is a kind of alga, but that somehow it is multiple kinds of algae.
I guess it’s like the trinity, simultaneously one and many. A plural taxon.
Marigolds? Also algae.
Well, that makes IDing Unknown green things easier - they’ll all be Algae now!
‘Algae’ is a polyphyletic grouping of photosynthetic and mixotrophic organisms from various kingdoms, so this is very strange indeed.
Hey y’all, give them a break! In these unprecedented times, things are like, really difficult for trillion dollar corporations that enjoy and exploit multi billion-dollar tax benefits across the globe.
bless their sweet hearts. 
Apparently this was some glitch in Google’s search algal-rithm.
But it appears to be fixed, so no taxonomic revision on iNat needed.
A circular reference. But then again no…
A plant is Algae. Algae is a Plant. algae is Cyanobacteria…
Most mammals seem to be fish now, too.
For any Pokemon fans out there, this is like when Google decided when Tyrantrum became an Onix-Salamence type.
To maximize efficiency!
cats and dogs are Animal now.
But the rose is still Algae 
I mean, technically all mammals are a type of very derived “fish”.
“What’s in a name? That which we call an Algae, by any other name would smell as sweet” - Shakespeare (modified slightly)
