In the hypothetical example, they are providing wrong information to Google. If they provided no information, it would be a different story.

> That's still Google's fault. If their service is providing out-of-date information, it's their fault.

Huh? If the business owners aren't updating the correct info in My Business, how can that possibly be Google's fault?

Because this means My Business is not fit for purpose. Google is a web search engine, not a Google proprietary DB search engine.

Google is an advertising company.. not a search engine

> Google is an advertising company

Google is a company that sells space for ads; an “advertising company” conventionally refers to a company that designs ad campaigns and purchases ad space for them on behalf of a client.

> not a search engine.

No, its both. Just as historically newspapers publishers in the US have been both producers of newspapers and companies that sell ad space.

Google the company is an ad intermediary company. Google is also the colloquial name of Google Search.

Just because Google scrapes my website once to seed their database doesn't make me responsible for being their data monkey to keep it updated.

If Google is scraping this information and keeping it separate, unlinked and un-updated from its source of truth, how is that anyone but Google's fault?

You have to register your business page. It's not automatic. I believe op here meant a Google business listing which was created by the owner explicitly, but not updated.

It's not? Interesting. Literally hundreds of business listings popped up in Google Maps overnight, a few months ago, which appear very much scraped out of some registry - name, category, address, nothing else. Similarly with the """"place names"""" that seem to be based on people's personal remarks, and about as inaccurate.

Google map entries are connected to, but not the same as business entries. https://www.google.com.au/business/

Once you claim your business location, most submitted changes should come to you for review. (There may be exceptions, I'm not an expert here)

If this were the case then one would expect Google to be paying businesses for up-to-date information with a contractual SLA.