Agreed, but even "Google sometimes gets things wrong" isn't entirely accurate.
So it favors popularity over accuracy. So what? Google is not in the business of providing the most accurate search results. It's in the business of generating ad revenue. If popular links make Google more valuable, then favoring them is "getting things right" from the perspective of a private company.
I don't think it's correct to say that it favors popularity over accuracy. Actually I think that is a seriously editorialized take as well, not in keeping with the spirit of HN. I think it would be more correct to say that much of the time popularity is accuracy, in that it's what the searcher is looking for. When there are a variety of interpretations of a query, the most popular interpretation is the rational prior expectation. When not -- for example, when I search for "go" with a history of searching for programming related topics -- Google tries to give me what I'm looking for.
But it's also just a hard problem. That featured snippet about the dentist for example: Google's computers aren't investigative journalists. The purpose of the featured snippet is actually to favor accuracy over popularity by deferring to journalists when Google senses that the searcher is looking for information about an event that was covered in the news. However, if the journalists get it wrong, how is Google going to know? Dollars to donuts, if Google actually knew the right answer, that's what they would surface.
As the defacto front page to the internet, it is aeguably in society's best interest for search results to return more than SEO spam and ads.
I think the modern state of Google is a huge disservice to civilization, compared to what it was and could be. By prioritizing popularity it reduces the majority of search queries to the lowest common denominator and encourages shallow, non-technical culture.
I think what we're seeing in the refinement algorithm is a regression to the layman's mean, so to speak, as they tune (train?) The algorithm to work better for the majority of their users, who happen to be non-technical.
But when you excessively dumb down technology you reduce incentive for people to learn anything and, more importantly here, the dumbing down means showing entertainment and SEO results over possibly more technical content.
Personally I find it disheartening when I search for technical words and the only results are celebrities or media.
They provide value in a specific form, which is aligned to their goals, and it may or may not overlap with what's optimal for society. But they're not in the business of providing what's best for society. That's a byproduct of competition, not a goal from the outset.
But that's the thing. Any single actor can only provide sub-optimal results, but competition and regulation create a competitive game which provides society with optimal results.
Google isn't wrong – it's actually doing its part really well. It's either competition or regulation that need tweaking. Probably both.
In other words
> an economic system that by it's very nature can only provide sub-optimal results is broken.
The economic system can provide optimal results. Individual actors can but don't need to in order for the prior statement to be true.
So it favors popularity over accuracy. So what? Google is not in the business of providing the most accurate search results. It's in the business of generating ad revenue. If popular links make Google more valuable, then favoring them is "getting things right" from the perspective of a private company.