Interestingly a current search still shows this, and the root cause is the fact that there are no pictures of Greg Egan available.
This is a fascinating failure mode - Google works on a best effort basis, so it doesn’t have a strong enough concept of “there is no correct answer to this question” or perhaps “my approach is wrong in this case”.
This is one of the many problems with Google nowadays. Instead of returning me the only 3 search results somewhat matching my query, it stupidly broadens my query so that it's able to show me pages and pages of (to me) completely unrelated results. For advertising I guess...
> concept of “there is no correct answer to this question” or perhaps “my approach is wrong in this case”.
Exactly. What's wrong with "We could only find 3 results matching your query. Try searching using some other terms, or try the following related queries."? It's so annoying to sift through the results just to realize that Google has no damn clue what I'm looking for.
It doesn't for me. I just get his home page as the top of search results, and a knowledge panel on the right-hand side that appears to accurately describe him (with zero photos), and a button "Claim this knowledge panel" which he could presumably use to correct any misinformation.
Frankly, I find nothing fascinating here - more like a rookie mistake that nobody cares about - at least not stronlgly about to make something about it.
This is a fascinating failure mode - Google works on a best effort basis, so it doesn’t have a strong enough concept of “there is no correct answer to this question” or perhaps “my approach is wrong in this case”.