I dunno.

They didn't.

What's happened is that Yahoo's search is so good that Google have decided to use the Yahoo engine rather than the Google engine for Google searches. Obviously, it would be very embarassing for them if this was widely known, so they need to proxy through an intermediary to keep the whole thing anonymous. Which is where MeFi comes in. You think those Yahoo/Google search boxes are there by accident? For every search submitted to Google, use is made of a non-cryptographically-secure algorithm, to select one of the many intermediary proxy candidates that are scattered throughout the intarwebs. 99.99995% of the time, this works fine, and the user is unaware of what's happening. The few times that it doesn't work, well, that's when MeFi's number comes up.

Matt is in league with the devil and must be deposed by popular uprising. Select me as your leader, little people, and it shall be so.

On preview: what edible energy said.

veedubya's wrong.
Google keeps sputtering out because it switched to eBay's technology.