It works best if you have some of the "Google Toolbar" utilities installed, and you may not have noticed that you can select in the tools and customizations whether or not to allow Google to "autocomplete" and/or "suggest" searches for you.

The "autocomplete" may be considered a "feature" that can be useful. What it does, in effect, is to suggest similar searches that you have made previously, followed by ones that are "most popular" with the illiterate rabble who are the most frequent users of Google.

It has been suggested, although not conclusively confirmed, that Google is able to use your entire "history" to autocomplete entries you start, using the searches most popular with the illiterate rabble who suffer from the same psychopathic delusions that your searches indicate you may possess. (I'm paraphrasing conclusions from others, slightly.)

Google also does some more subtle things - sometimes - that, like the psycho search, border on being "sinister." In some cases, even if you don't request it, results will be tailored to your location -i.e. it's difficult for me to find a business not in Kansas (or pretending to be) with some kinds of searches, even though I don't recall ever telling Google where I am.

Google still suffers from the limitation that it does not permit you to ignore the "popular hits" and look at the real ones you're looking for, and you can only see a fixed number of "hits." You're not permitted to see the next 5,000 matches to your search, so if some "pop band" has used a word you need in your search as part of their name you'll get nothing but "entertainment news" when you want the news report about the newly reported "nanofibre hygrophobic surface coating" since "phobic" is too popular an "idiot" search term to permit listing "newsworthy" hits that contain it.

John