I'm not sure what your point is.
It is obvious that some things need to be rigorously synchronized and checkpointed, no matter how much work it takes -- checking account transactions, for instance.
Other things don't need that kind of effort, and very large databases have only these options: (1) a slightly out-of-date answer for everyone, (2) no answers at all for most people, (3) extremely-out-of-date answers for everyone, (4) spending a congressman's notion of small change on extra hardware -- in most contexts option (1) is a no-brainer even for a congressman.
The ODP has several public HTTP servers, that may be out of synch with any particular editing change for up to nine days. And then there are the ODP search servers off in their own time zone.
That's typical for any large information database.
The phone book comes out once a year; in my area, the yellow-pages and white-pages are staggered six months apart (and so are six months out of synch with each other.)
You'll observe that Google directory, the ODP, Google search results from the Google directory, Google general search results from directory.google.com, and Google search results from the ODP may ALL be out of synch with each other. For that matter, different Google servers are out of synch with each other for several days each month.
That's acceptable. The costs of the alternatives aren't.
