Dear Google: Is this evil?

Search for 'chrome' on Google and consider if the results are 'relevant'. The top 10 listings predominantly relate to Google's own product named 'Chrome'. I suppose the most egregious issues are the wikipedia listing cited and the tiny 'definition' link in the top right. They both link to descriptions of Google Chrome. Hmm...

Microsoft's Live.com search actually has similarly skewed results for 'windows' but has a much more diverse set of listings for 'chrome' including a more appropriate Wikipedia listing and a series of websites including 'chrome.com' which was omitted from Google's top 10.

So is anyone being evil? I doubt it. Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows just happen to be the most popular sites out there for those words right now. It is a good demonstration of how difficult it is to automatically distill from billions of pages the 10 most accurate results for a single word phrase. It is an equally powerful demonstration that the top listings are the most popular; not necessarily the most correct. So while no one is being evil, remember that while Google is in the lead today, there are certainly opportunities for all parties to improve.