Today I came across an article on how some brands are associating itself with 26/11 anniversary and why some are shying away from it. No you are wrong. This isn’t just another write-up criticising the Idea ad for being insensitive to the whole issue. So let’s just continue.

The article mentions about a 26/11 website hosted by MSN India. So naturally I wanted to see the website.  I typed 26/11 on my Google bar. And in 0.19 seconds, the search engine splashed 15,500,000 web entries. But on top of the search results was the mathematical result, 26/11 = 2.36363636. Google calculator was spot on. I scrolled down and saw the Wikipedia entries on November 26, followed by September 11 attacks. I wondered why not search 9/11.

I googled 9/11. 22,700,000 entries filled up my screen. And it took 0.03 seconds less. Wow! The search results contained all the usual suspects. Mostly wikis – Wikipedia and WikiLeaks. But there was no sign of the mathematical result. What the heck is this? Why 9/11 has been singled out? (Check it out and please do tell me if there are other exceptions, I hope not).  If these results are based on some “complex algorithms” as Google had stated in its apology to Michelle Obama, why is that the mathematical result not shown?

So what was I searching for… oh yeah the MSN 26/11 website. Maybe Bing can give me some answers. Kyon nahin dono (Bing and MSN) ek hi baap ke toh bete hain. I searched 26/11 on Bing and surprise surprise it too had a calculator and the answer it showed was correct but unlike Google’s answer, this result was restricted to just 6 decimal places.  So like any curious guy who has nothing to do but keep searching, I binged 9/11. It left me disappointed. Yes, again there was no sign of the mathematical result. So it just wasn’t the Google but even Bing too had some problem in giving out the mathematical result.

So what’s next I said to myself. Simple, let’s Yahoo! Et tu Yahoo! Like Google and Bing, Yahoo! too didn’t have any mathematical result for 9/11 but it correctly gave the answer to 26/11 and that too to 10 decimal places.

So what inference can I draw from all these? I thought for a while. Here it is: Sab search engine ka baap alag hain par maa toh ek hi hain – America.