Google Claims Jesus Born in 1963

When was Jesus Christ born? Most scholars put the year somewhere between 4 BC and 6 BC based on the fact that King Herod died in the spring of 4 BC. However, Google, using some type of advanced research algorithm, has estimated his birth at April 11 , 1963. This is the date Google spits out if you search for "When was Jesus born?"

Perhaps Google refers to the second coming?

Or maybe -- as ReadWriteWeb suggests -- we are seeing the beginning of Google fooling about with semantic search. The semantic web, which some believe will be "Web 3.0", is based on having the information on web pages categorized in such a way that it is understandable to a computer.

Whichever the case, it seems we are seeing a good example of the downside of the semantic web. Whether it is an algorithm trying to pull the information out of an unoptimized web page or semantic engine pulling the information from a categorized page, we run into the same basic problem that we run into with many Web 2.0 sites: Can we trust the information?

This is the downside of wikis and other social media sites and one reason why many experts feel that the next trend for the web is a move back towards expert opinion. And while I don't think people will be leaving Wikipedia in droves, I do think it points out one of the big issues we have yet to solve -- when tapping into the power of people, how do we verify the information?

Read more about Google's new semantic-like tool at ReadWriteWeb.