Google IS Broken, and I Think I Know Why...

Hmm.. Perhaps you are right and the article should have shown more examples. This isn't a single contained issue, its a known issue in the industry and I can see that the article was written for those who know a little more about the history of the industry and could be less valuable for those new to the industry. This has been happening for the past couple of weeks or so on most single phrase queries. Sites affected are using many different engines (not just vbulletin) or no engine at all (straight HTML). As you read the article, scroll down to read the comment from Minstrel who gives an example of how Google is reverting to index backups that are up to one year old. Also if you do a link: query or a site: query you'll find that data for almost any site is inaccurate. And for more information, check out forums.digitalpoint.com, seochat.com, webmasterworld.com, threadwatch.com, searchenginewatch.com etc.

But I do agree with your statement about not using Google. Its a little premature to make the decision to ignore Google at this point in the game. I prefer a "wait and see" approach since they are in the middle of another major update at the current time and making changes to sites now would only further muddy the waters.