>If I want to write clearly and without ambiguity, I rewrite sentences that have these problems. Why wouldn't I do the same for search queries?
Ok, so imagine one online retailer follows your advice and expect the users to write clear and unambiguous queries, while another retailer puts extra effort into attribution.
Great question, but with potentially nonintuitive results.
A sales gimmick furniture store would use in the past was to offer customers a free gallon on ice cream for visiting the store. The value was to the store offering the promotion, as shoppers would be drawn to the "free" gift, but on receiving the ice cream -- too much to eat directly. -- would then have to go home to put the dessert in the freezer. And have less time to comparison shop at competing merchant's stores. Given limited shopping time (usually a weekend activity), this is an effective resource exhaustion attack.
Similar tricks to tie up time, patience, or cognitive reserve are common in sales. For a dominant vendor, tweaking the hassle factor of a site so long as defection rates are low could well be a net positive, if it makes the likelihood of a visitor going to other sites lower.
Still I insist that business serving up more relevant search results for loosely phrased queries will make more money than the one relying on the user to formulate perfect queries.
The original "confusopoly" link talked almost exclusively about pricing, and for good reason: pricing is based on numbers, which humans are bad at but computers are very good at, and every product in the catalog has a price, so it's easy to take the same tactic and apply it to all of the products.
I'm not sure trying to confuse people about whether a shirt has stripes on it would make as much sense. The purchaser seems likely to give up on picking an ideal shirt and just go with the cheapest result.
I thought I'd written on a more comparable gripe similar to the "shirt without stripes" problem in online commerce, the confusopoly item was the closest I could find readily. (Other is likely among my G+ take-out.)
Both though have the same essence: a manifestly confusing and annoying interface may be serving the merchant's interests.
See also Ling's Cars, possibly explaining awful Web design:
Ok, so imagine one online retailer follows your advice and expect the users to write clear and unambiguous queries, while another retailer puts extra effort into attribution.
Which one will make more money?