I've Been Googled!

New Yorker

Well, now, my world has changed. We live in scarier times. Mistrust is everywhere. What better way to check out a potential girl/boyfriend than to Google them, as first reported in The New York Observer about two years ago? (So I am little slow on the uptake here. Sorry.)

Let's face it: Google.com is the hands-down winner of the search tools. It has been for some time. I don't think I have brought up another search site in years, come to think of it. It just does a terrific job (most of the time), and when I can't find what I am looking for in the first couple of pages on Google, I generally just go away and move on to something else. That's the nature of the Web these days. We are too busy to track something down. Tenacity isn't a virtue; it is getting in the way of moving down your to-do list.

Thinking about this further, the way I interact with the Web has also changed over the years. I used to have a page of bookmarks a mile long that had all sorts of sites that I visited. I spent loads of time maintaining this list, placing links in categories and ordering them by relative importance. Given my mobile nature, the way I go through machines and rebuild operating systems, and the way the Web changes, that pile of bookmarks has been pared down over the years to just a few key sites. I don't need anything more. And if I do, I can always Google something to find out.

So we now have Google as a verb. Actually, it is an entire cottage industry. There are plenty of what I will call the after-market sites, trying to pick up on Google's popularity. A few examples (I am sure you can find others): Check out GooglePeople, a site that can answer "who is" kinds of questions. It isn't all that authoritative -- when I put in the question, "Who was the first man on the moon," the results ranged from the correct answer to Elvis and Forrest Gump.

Then there is googlism.com, which looks through Google results and compiles them nicely in a single place for your reading pleasure, to give you an idea of what others think of you (as one example of how to use this service). I was happy to see that this is what the site had to say about me, or at least people with my name:

• david strom is not only knowledgeable on his subjects but entertaining as well
• david strom is one of my favorite tech writers
• david strom is far more competent than we are in networking matters
• david strom is good as usual this week
• david strom is here to help you sort it all out
• david strom is really smart
• david strom is a must
• This can easily add even more hours to how much time you spend in front of your computer. As a side note, the fun thing about being master of your domain is getting serious inquiries from people who either have your name in common or who want to buy it from you. Strom is German for current, and various electric utilities in Germany and Switzerland have asked me to sell them the domain (though not for very much). And I have heard from various David Stroms from all over the world, including one gent who lives about an hour away.
• The googling of the Web is one more indication that things in our industry have matured. And I am glad that the New Yorker is on top of this trend, at least with its cartoons.