[anonytrary]

That's not the definition of lying. Lying is about intent. If you keep using that word wrong, you'll end up saying something that isn't true. Are you lying?

Being wrong is not the same thing as lying, or else everything wrong becomes lying and the word "lying" loses its meaning. No one wants to be wrong. That is where intent comes into play.

[gnud]

I guess my comment came off a little harsh.

I was actually interested in at what point this should be considered intentional. At what point should Google be obligated to hide this (mis)information, or show some disclaimer? After one "feedback"? After 10? After this blogpost? After a newspaper article?

[masonic]

  Lying is about intent. 

Intent or reckless disregard for truth.

If, for example, I write that MIT has assembled a robot army with the aim of taking over Canada, I don't know for a fact that is false.

Slander and libel use that standard.

[daveFNbuck]

If continuing to spread the falsehood after multiple corrections doesn't attach intent, what could Google possibly do for you to think they were lying in a search result?

[anonytrary]

Google isn't a single person saying sentences who can immediately change what he says in his next sentence. Changing Google results is not trivial, the search engine has lots of quirks and is a complex code. If you ask Google to change something, you need to submit a ticket, which is in line with thousands of other tickets. That ticket needs to get evaluated by a customer support team, which sends it to another team, which sends it to another team. Google is a gargantuan entity and things take time. It is very easy to see how this lack of change can arise from something other than malicious intent. I highly doubt Google is intentionally trying to taint this one man's reputation.

TLDR: Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

[daveFNbuck]

So there is no possible situation in which you would say Google was lying in a search result?

[anonytrary]

Any possible situation? Of course there is. This one? Highly unlikely. There's no way Google cares enough about this guy to lie about him. Apparently, they don't even care enough about him to fix the error in their search result. Poor guy, he's in the "famous but not famous enough" valley.

[daveFNbuck]

But the question that's been asked 3 times now in this thread is what it would take for Google to be considered lying. If I don't establish that, how can we discuss whether this qualifies?

[anonytrary]

I feel like we're beating a dead horse at this point. If someone at Google intentionally modified the result output to say X where X is false, then that would be considered lying.