New Scientist’s search fun

New Scientist has reported a couple of fun observations they had reported about search engines.

The first is that Microsoft entered tens of thousands of Encarta entries into its new MSN search engine, so that users could type in a question and receive answers.

So one reader allegedly typed in “hottest place on earth”, only to be returned results covering Venus, 2 species of plant, a type of bird, and then an Encarta entry on Norwich…

Another reported that a search on Google for “Free CDs” produced an entry at the top of the page for “Free CDs at discount prices”.

Surprisingly, two days after publishing those findings, I can’t replicate the results…