Google uses new tool to help understand vaccine names, but it could change search forever too

The same thing having similar names in different parts of the world or cultures, is a problem Google search has encountered for long. So when it faced a similar challenge around Covid-19 vaccine names, the tech giant turned to its new Multitask Unified Model (MUM) tool for help.

Since AstraZeneca, CoronaVac, Moderna, Pfizer, Sputnik and other broadly distributed vaccines all have many different names all over the world, Google’s “ability to correctly identify all these names is critical to bringing people the latest trustworthy information about the vaccine”. So now the search platform uses MUM “to identify over 800 variations of vaccine names in more than 50 languages in a matter of seconds,” Pandu Nayak, Google Fellow and Vice President, Search wrote in a blog post.