exactly. I don't see this as that different than the unit converter or whatever that best guess thing was recently (or including a map on a location-like query,

exactly. I don't see this as that different than the unit converter or whatever that best guess thing was recently (or including a map on a location-like query, or a row of image thumbnails for popular celebrity names)...google thinks you're looking for a person, and they have a person lookup service. moreover, that service contains information populated by the people that you can look up, which makes it more likely to be exactly what you are looking for. as buro9 said, the interesting questions have nothing to do with the (stupid) doped horse analogy or whether this upsets some platonic ideal of a page-ranked search index (in reality, they don't exist and no one would want to use one). the interesting questions are if google including this information is harming competitors that would bring innovation to the market, whether that's even a bad thing, long term, and if (somehow) preventing google from including this would just hobble a mostly good product or would actually materially improve things for consumers. those are really hard questions, and asking them like this just diminishes the level of debate that can be had about them.