The most likely explanation is that Google is using the title from the Open Directory Project (Dmoz.org). You can check directly.

Bear in mind that titles are displayed (like descriptions) within context, so often, if you search for text contained within the title, you'll see the one in the HTML.

The other possibility (although it's relatively unusual) is that Google is actually rewriting the title. I've seen a few examples of this and while I have no clear explanation yet, I'm keen on tracking down the logic behind these.

I think it's most likely your last comment as it's something I have first noticed today and saw a couple of times, leading me to belive it's something new they are testing.

I think it's most likely your last comment as it's something I have first noticed today and saw a couple of times, leading me to belive it's something new they are testing.

The first check should still be at Dmoz though ;)

The rewrites I've seen have been to make (for instance) a "non informative" title into something that makes more sense, or to make it more obviously a title that genuinely reflects the user's keywords.

This has been happening for over a year for one of our corporate sites. Our <title> doesn't contain our company name, but when you search for our company name the first result has the title changed to "company".
This is the same name as we're listed (linked) for in Dmoz, but it's not using their description.
Maybe it's just making the obvious result more obvious.

From Google Webmaster Central Help - Why is Google rewriting my Title Tags ? [google.com]

and here' a WW thread

Google rewriting titles in SERPs [webmasterworld.com]

To prevent all search engines (that support the meta tag) from using this information for the page's description, use the following:

<meta name="robots" content="NOODP">

To specifically prevent Google from using this information for a page's description, use the following:

<meta name="googlebot" content="NOODP">

If you use the robots meta tag for other directives, you can combine those. For instance:

<meta name="googlebot" content="NOODP, nofollow">

Source: [google.com...]

They say to stop google using DMOZ description in serps but as you have seen they use the DMOZ title as well. This stops both.

Google has a team that manually reviews TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags.

If they think the ones that you wrote aren't good, they'll either replace it with text from your page or write a new tag for you.

And don't worry: No appeal, no changes.