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Go Google Be
Cool
Googling
has now become a way of life, the easiest way to check out a
potential date, future employers or headhunters who promise
million-dollar jobs, writes Raj Kaushik
The practice of googling
is all right, but one must
be cautious when
jumping to
conclusions
I do it, you do it, and everybody else who has a
network connection does it. Yet until about a decade ago there was
no such act as “googling”. With the Google search engine becoming
increasingly popular in the late ’90s, its name has made the
transition from noun to verb. But lately “googling” is not limited
to only searching for information using Google; interestingly, the
word has become an all-rounder.
The verb “googling” is being
closely associated with the process of checking out a potential
date, anonymously, and without the target’s knowledge.
We go out,
meet strangers, exchange our whereabouts and sometimes really follow
up with them. In one casual encounter, it’s very difficult to judge
the person. Googling the one you might be interested in is nowadays
fairly common practice. Before making moves, it’s prudent to do some
homework. The person at the other end could be anyone from a
brilliant scientist or doctor to a rapist or murderer or could even
be “most wanted” by the FBI.
One New Yorker met a guy, but before
going on a date she preferred to google him. As soon as she entered
“LaShawn Pettus-Brown” in the text field and pressed “search”, she
found an FBI warrant for his arrest.
The woman, whose identity
hasn’t been revealed, called the FBI and told them of her upcoming
meeting with LaShawn at a restaurant in Long Island. Naturally, the
man was arrested when he showed up.
LaShawn was wanted in
connection with a failed plan to rehabilitate a 90-year-old theatre
in Cincinnati, Ohio. The city has lost more than $180,000 after
investing in the project.
While living In New York, Lynn, now a
newspaper editor in Washington, DC, dated a guy who turned out to be
a freak. When learnt from a friend that her ex-boyfriend has moved
somewhere else from New York, Lynn freaked out – what if he’s
stalking her? Lynn googled him and learnt that at that moment her
ex-boyfriend was living in Chicago. Googling gave Lynn a sense of
security as she knew exactly where her ex-boyfriend was living. In
the pre-Internet time, one needed to hire private detective for this
kind of services.
The practice of googling is all right, but one
must be cautious when jumping to conclusions based on a quick search
or confusing someone with the others with the same name. It is a
must to crosscheck references using more than one and reliable web
pages. In the pre-google era, if you needed to find out information
about a person there was no choice other than by being with him. It
was a risky business and many women who took their chances ended up
in wrong relationships.
“Every girl should Google a guy before
she walks out the door with him. What if he told you he had a good
job and you go on and find out he’s filed for bankruptcy?” advises
Ellen Fein, co-author of The Rules for Online Dating. Googling has a
subclass called self-googling, which refers to searching your own
name. By nature people are self-conscious. They want to know what
people are talking – good as well as bad — about them. Citing
curiosity as his primary motive, even Bill Clinton isn’t stranger to
self-googling. Not surprisingly when he entered his name, the Google
search engine flooded the browser with 2,790,000
results.
According to Alexander Halavais, assistant professor at
the School of Informatics, University of Buffalo, self-googling is a
shrewd form of “personal brand management” in the digital age. Dr.
Matthew Glasser, a licensed guidance counsellor, says self-googling
two to three times a day is normal. But self-googling in access can
be a nuisance. Psychologist Morgan Fanberg is obsessed with
self-googling. According to colleagues and Internet Service Provider
(ISP) records, he self-googles in a narcissistic manner. The
peculiar behaviour of Fanberg came into light when the Recording
Industry Association of America subpoenaed his web surfing records
to search for evidence of illegal downloads.
Google is like a
giant brain that keeps on replacing its dead cells to keep itself on
top of the world. Its fabulous algorithm returns relevant results.
That’s why even judges google to look up information on people and
companies involved in litigation, and to challenge facts presented
by attorney in court. In one case in Ohio, a judge who ordered a
mother not to smoke near her 8-year-old daughter cited medical
journals and a Google search that lists 60,000-plus links for
“secondhand smoke” and 30,000-plus links for “secondhand smoke
children”.
After conducting a Web search, an Australian federal
court denied a visa request from a man from Sri Lanka. The visa
hopeful claimed to be a famous filmmaker worried about persecution
at home. The court found the man’s claim unsubstantiated as a google
query on him turned up nothing. Bernard Haldane Associates, a career
management firm, traps job seekers by telling them that it has
exclusive access to a “hidden job market” with thousands of
employment opportunities. The firm sells a bundle of lies and hopes
at the cost between Rs.175,000 to Rs.8,00,000.
Susan
Zimmerman-Rowe was also promised “exclusive” access to lucrative job
opportunities. “Instead, I got a website address with old listings,
a videotape of interviewing techniques, an outline to create my own
resume with little guidance from Haldane, a couple of hours of false
promises from a Haldane ‘counsellor’, and no response when I
requested a refund of the unused portion of the exorbitant fee I
paid to Haldane,” said Rowe. “I didn’t pay Haldane nearly $14,000
(close to Rs.700,000) to tell me to go around contacting my past
business associates begging for a job,” says Don Egan, another
disappointed ex-client of Haldane.
Once I also made up my mind
to solicit the services of Haldane, but when I googled I encountered
too many consumer complaints and also several law suits filed
against Haldane. The practice of googling is quite common and is
here to stay. While some people google for specific information,
others look out for preys who are alone, weak and vulnerable. If you
have picked a fight with your parents or spouse, tell about it to
people who you trust, discuss with your friends, but never put it
out on the Web. Your good deeds may not take rounds, but negative,
juicy information spreads on the Web just like a wild fire.
Once
on the Web, your vulnerability is out in the open to be exploited by
all. You have no control over it. You can’t hide it. You can’t take
it back. And in case you are able to solve your problems, the
negative information out there will always haunt you. Now suppose
you would like to correct yourself and tell the world that you are
living happily since the last episode, you are leaving behind a
trail. In a sense, you trap yourself in a downward spiral. So the
rule of the thumb is enter bare minimum personal information in any
text field on the Web and do never wash your dirty laundry in
public. If you’re about to commit your time and money to some scheme
or plan, don’t be shy – just google to find more about it.
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