Google is broken and all the King's horses and all the King's men...

Edward C. Zimmermann — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:00:32 +0100

Google search (and not just Google's) have more and more become less about quest (finding something one does not know) or inquiry but trend watching. The Web is more and more invisible and replaced by metrics of popularism and politics of a volksempfanger.

Searching for the phrase (pulled from a current news article)
kebab and pie kiosk
(no quotes or + etc. so the query runs as it was typed)

the query went to:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=l0a&num=100&q=kebab+and+pie+kiosk&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

And the top slots are all flooded with BBC and blogs:

#
'Body sold' to Russia kebab shop - Dark Lord Potter Forums
6 posts - 6 authors - Last post: 25 minutes ago
Part of it was eaten and part was also sold to a kebab and pie kiosk," their
statement said. It was not immediately clear if any customers had been served. ...
forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?p=331481 - 25 minutes ago -
#
BBC NEWS | Europe | 'Body sold' to Russia kebab shop
14 Nov 2009 ... Part of it was eaten and part was also sold to a kebab and pie
kiosk," their statement said. It was not immediately clear if any customers ...
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8360569.stm - 16 hours ago -
#
Bigredkev: Murdered Dead Mans Body Sold To Russia Kebab Shop and ...
- 12:29am
Part of it was eaten and part was also sold to a kebab and pie kiosk," their
statement said. It is not yet clear if any customers have been served the body ...
www.bigredkev.com/.../police-in-russia-have-arrested-three.html - 8 hours ago -

Semantics are clear.. Anyone looking for info on kebab and pie kiosks should
quickly loose their appetite for kebab/doner/shawarma.

But also
pie kiosk

They too are not doing well:

Bigredkev: Murdered Dead Mans Body Sold To Russia Kebab Shop and ...
- 12:29am
Part of it was eaten and part was also sold to a kebab and pie kiosk," their
statement said. It is not yet clear if any customers have been served the body ...
www.bigredkev.com/.../police-in-russia-have-arrested-three.html - 8 hours ago -

is in the second slot..

Not even the single term kebab fares well:

With 2 BBC stories sharing the second hit slot:

'Body sold' to Russia kebab shop 14 Nov 2009 ... Police in Russia hold three men suspected of killing a man, eating part of the body and selling other part to a kebab shop.
How unhealthy is a doner kebab? 21 Jan 2009 ... The doner is a post-pub favourite - grease and salt being the main food groups craved by the squiffy. Yet it also offers protein, ...

The "feature" to blend in (using something equivalent to our Newsrank) the top news and blog stories into the top hits (real time blah blah search
I think they called it to counter BING blongs) creates even more information blindness. Search becomes really nothing more than a trend instrument..

Compare now to BING:

kebab and pie kiosk

http://www.bing.com/search?q=kebab+and+pie+kiosk&go=&form=QBLH&filt=all

all biased to tech blog/slog sites

Yahoo? Looks like Google

http://de.search.yahoo.com/search?p=kebab+pie+kiosk&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8&rd=r1

IBU News (Germany) Edition 0.9.9 - Why Google search is not search but trend spotting

Google is broken and all the King's horses and all the King's men...