Google places tremendous faith in The Algorithm, but what happens when The Algorithm dons an eyepatch and entices the unwary into a life of piratical adventure and scurvy?

A non-eyepatched reader pointed out to us that Google searches for "scrubs season 1" suggest instead that users might want to see results for "scrubs season 1 torrent"—and Google then helpfully offers links to relevant files at The Pirate Bay and torrentz.com. (Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft's Live Search suggest "torrent" as an additional search term, though Microsoft's results do include a Mininova link on the first page.)

We checked the result by entering numerous other TV shows. Many offered at least one link to a .torrent file on the first page of the results, while several (like searches for HBO's "Rome season 1") also suggested the addition of "torrent" to the search.

Google is really all things to all people. With the Scrubs search, for example, the top result is a link to buy the show from Amazon.com. The text ads on the right side of the results page offer Scrubs DVDs for sale from Barnes & Noble, eBay, and Half.com. Several .torrent files are linked directly from the results page, as are a few YouTube tribute videos. Shows that are in the news often have headline links, while others have links to ad-supported online viewing at sites like Hulu.

It's a glorious hodgepodge of material (a search for "Simpsons season 20" even returns a link to a complete—and completely illegal—episode on Rutube.ru, with one guy dubbing all the voices). Google certainly makes it easy to find, watch, or buy legal versions of many shows, but it makes it just as simple to grab the .torrent—and in some cases, even suggests it.