Googling' people is a new trend in spying - Series in Parallel

Another friend of mine, not Miss GYN-aware, recently went on a date. This was the first time in a while and I was excited for her. As Saturday night progresses I was certain she was having a blast. Then the phone call came.

"Supria."

"Yeah? Good or bad?" I replied.

"I've been googled!" she cried.

I was taken aback. I don't ever recall learning an SAT word "to google", but at that moment I understood what she meant. Her [all synonyms of paranoia inserted here] date had looked her up on the infamous search engine Google.com. So what was the big deal?

I suppose we are in the day and age where 'googling' a person is a way of assuring (or becoming grossly disillusioned) that the people we interact with on a daily basis are not pedophilic monsters. 'Googling' their names, besides sounding like some Star Wars action verb, seems to be the most viable and innocuous way of going about this process.

The search engine, said its' founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, was actually a play on the word 'googol' which is the largest conceivable number: ten with one hundred zeros following. In fact Google.com, from the beginning, was intended to be the world's largest organized search engine.

Founded in 1998, in Menlo Park, Calif., the search engine was first led by three hardcore engineers.This phenomenon caught the attention of the growing monopoly AOL/Netscape, and immediately became incorporated as the company's main web search service. This merger was adulated across the board from PC magazine, to Time's Top Ten Best Cybertech list for 1999.

After buying Deja.com, another growing search site, Google engineers started the difficult task of integrating the huge volume in the Internet's Usenet archive into a searchable format. Formerly a Linux operating system, Google now introduced improved posting, post removal, and threading of 500 million-plus messages.

Google doesn't only limit itself to text. Photos, images, graphs, and vending options are also accessible just by typing a simple descriptor phrase.

Going back to my friend and her inquisitive date, I think 'googling' a person is a common phenomena. We are dying to know what other people have done in the past, what they have accomplished, and who they really are. Identity has never had such an online appeal - from AIM profiles, to personal websites, defining oneself in the context of the Internet is certainly a growing trend.

But what does this mean for privacy records? One can only speculate. Ultimately the responsibility rests on the individual to restrict any sort of information that they don't want the whole world to know off of google.com. It is your constitutional right to request that your name and information be taken off a website to ensure better privacy.

Although these are important issues to take note of, I somehow doubt most people would care to limit their information online, unless you have some dark, rap star like history. The more on the web about you, the more acclamation you have received, and the more you have accomplished as an individual.

As for my friend, I think she has Xanga.com to yell at for her date's unscrupulous knowledge of her daily activities and online philosophical tangents about boys.