I can’t remember the last time I used Google to find a piece of factual information and ended up with a completely wrong result.

The rare exception recently was a search I did for:

“I promise you I will” lyrics

I was trying to find the name of the artist whose song repeats that phrase over and over. Here’s what Google found:

Top result: Depeche mode
8 of the top 10 results: Depeche mode
13 of the top 20 results: Depeche mode

The real answer?

A one-hit wonder band called When in Rome. The poor guys had their one hit and pretty much everyone seems to think that it’s actually a Depeche Mode song.

This illustrates one potentially interesting weakness with web search. If a majority of people, including reputable ones, believe something to be true and keep adding links to things they believe are true, that’s what Google is going to put up at the top.… READ THE REST