Surely the misconception is the belief that what google displays is the page title. Google displays a link to a page, with a short description of what you will find there. Likewise, when I link to a page from my page, I don't use the title of the page: I use some text that I chose. This a non-story, as far as "rewriting titles" goes. What is interesting is that Google has an automated way to briefly summarize a page.