I guess, even in the original results, the problem is not really that Google search was not understanding the meaning of the search term (which is possible with today's models). Rather, it was a bit confused about what you are really searching for here. Maybe a comparison of shirts with and without stripes? The search query was just unusual, and it is not too unreasonable to guess that the query was not meant literally. At least this is a valid possibility, that the query was not meant literally. So it is reasonable to just return some results which might be related to the query, which will also be shirts with stripes.

If you argue this is bad behavior: Maybe we need a web query which really only takes the query literally. Putting the query in quotes will not quite have this effect for Google. Maybe some other syntax?

Google is in the business of producing quick results to sell ads while keeping the cost low. If anyone does better, they will likely do it using a costlier algorithm, and if there is more margin in reselling tangible products than ads then Amazon is incentivized to use costlier algorithms that are more accurate. But I think the margin in both cases does not justify the use of algorithms that may be more accurate in some small percentage of cases but a lot more costly.