Google gave a misleading answer if you asked for the 'Avengers: Infinity War' release date

pulse

April 23, 2018 7:02 PM

If you try Googling what the release date for "Avengers: Infinity War" is, you'll be told that it's April 23, 2018 in the US. This is wrong.

Google search results give a misleading "release date" for "Avengers: Infinity War."
Google's snippet says the movie releases this Monday, April 23 in the US. It actually comes to theaters April 27 in the US.
Google search results have a history of promoting false information such as debunked conspiracy theories.

UPDATE: Google corrected the error after being contacted by Business Insider. See bottom of this article for more information.

If you want to know when Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War" comes to theaters, Google is not going to make it easy for you.

According to Google, the release date for Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War" is "April 23, 2018" in the US. It's not. As of Monday morning, this misleading answer appeared at the top of the search results in the form of a snippet block, which is a quick summary of the answer to your search.

The film's release date is actually this Friday, April 27 in the US.

There's a reasonable answer to why Google's search results might return an incorrect release date. The film's Los Angeles premiere is April 23. Wikipedia, for instance, lists both April 23 (for the Los Angeles premiere) and April 27 (for the US release).

But Google's answer isn't helpful to the average user who just wants to know when the movie comes out in theaters.

Searching the likes of "Avengers: Infinity War release date" or "Infinity War release" will bring you to the following misleading snippet:

That misleading date also shows up in the sidebar to the right of the search results:

There's not a clear explanation for why Google's search results can't tell us when "Infinity War" is being released versus the premiere, but Google has a history of promoting incorrect information like debunked conspiracy theories in its search results, and snippets. For instance, in 2016, searching "Did the Holocaust happen?" would return a conspiracy theory result claiming it didn't happen from a white nationalist website.

Bing, on the other hand, features the correct release date for "Infinity War":

Update: After being contacted by Business Insider, Google corrected the release date on its snippet to April 27, 2018.

Here is how it appears now:

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