More evil than Satan himself!

I have been using Google ever since it brilliantly hatched the brilliant ploy in late 1998 to hook up the words “More evil than Satan himself” with the search result “Microsoft.”

In the years since, Google has only gotten better and better. They added image and news searching. They bought DejaNews and converted their huge Usenet database into “Google Groups”, and then found other stores of data such that now the entire history of one of the oldest pieces of the Internet can be searched.

I've posted to Usenet. In fact, I began posting to Usenet ten years ago, and as I've alluded to before, I'm not terribly proud of my history there. I got into angry discussions in a number of technology groups, and posted things I wish I'd never said. It is not that I believe I was on the wrong side of the issues (I was one of the lumber cartel spam fighters of NANAE, tinc), but I have come to accept, if imperfectly, that discretion is the better part of valour, and that having good character is more important than making good points.)

Thanks to Google, all of this stuff that no longer reflects who I am is there for all the world to see, at no more than a click of a button. And who doesn't like to click buttons? This leads me to my topic – Google stalking.

Google stalking, like vanity searching, has become a common phenomenon, and hard to resist doing – when you meet interesting people, especially interesting people who have interesting activities, you look them up on Google to see just how interesting that might be. I remember the first time I did it, and I certainly didn't think I was stalking. A friend of mine told me he published a full glossy magazine as a hobby. Some hobby! I thought. So I looked up the magazine, saw that he'd done press interviews, and looked those up too. A few mouse clicks later and before I really knew it, I was looking at Usenet posts. As a result, I now know a lot more about this fellow than he probably realizes (just pedestrian stuff, but I know he'd wonder how I knew, if it ever came up in conversation.)

I realized at this point that this was a lot more than I'd want people knowing about me – the golden rule. I decided after ruminating on this that I would not do it anymore. No googling people up just because I knew them, unless I know they are OK with it.

You see, I know this other fellow who makes the most realistic model railroads you can imagine – he even makes the little houses with scaffolding, timbers, and bricking. He told me I could look him up on Google, and see the photos.

Honest!