Is someone Google-ing you?
Rev up your search engine in a new sport that reveals how popular your friends and (potential) acquaintances are.
-- By Dennis McCafferty

"I Google, therefore I am"? Perhaps. There's a new existential wrinkle within the cyber-universe today, a phenomenon by which your life is defined by all that is posted about you online. When someone types your name inside quotation marks on the popular search engine Google, your history emerges, with your past places of employment, significant others, athletic achievements and academic record potentially popping up on the screen. Any brushes with the law you'd like to share? If it's online, it's game.

Oh, you may scoff that no one would care to Google you. Ha! The cubicle-dwelling masses are using this formidable weapon like 21st-century antagonists in "Mad" magazine's "Spy vs. Spy." We have fathers Googling prospective sons-in-law, new hires Googling bosses, bosses Googling new hires, patients Googling doctors, magazine writers Googling their heartless editors for blackmail ammunition and ... well, I believe I've made my point.

The cultural catch phrase for this pastime is actually misleading. You can do it on any search engine. But, let's face it, "Googling" sounds cooler than "I'm gonna spend my lunch hour AltaVista-ing my new accountant." The origin of the search engine's name is appropriately matched to the infinite possibilities of stored detail about the Everyman: "Google" is a play on "googol," which translates to the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros.

What's stunning is how resourceful this tool is, how many purposes it serves. Why, it's the spackle of the online ether! I've chatted with Web-savvy professionals around the country and found there are no borders in the Googling Galaxy: Soon-to-be parents are Googling potential baby names to ensure their future little angel won't share his with a serial killer. An entrepreneur seeking venture capital Googled himself to see if his reputation would pass the due diligence process. The "blind date" Google is a national pastime for the Sex and the City crowd. Yet, perhaps columnist Amy Gilligan of the Dubuque, Iowa, Telegraph Herald put it best when she wrote: "If you're Googling your prospective dates, a word of warning: Don't jump to conclusions about someone just because Google says she murdered 50 people. Chances are, that's an overstatement."

The information compiled via a good Googling session both confirms and confuses. By now, we know the Internet is the place where all answers are stored -- regardless of whether they have any basis in fact. And even accurate search results cast misleading impressions. My own example: Googling my name once produced a link to a white supremacist e-newsletter. The horror! My first reaction was to e-mail all my family and friends and claim innocence. But there was a legitimate reason for the association; the newsletter quoted from an article I had written about a pending civil rights legal case.

Ultimately, Googling is about more than "getting the goods" on whoever is out there. It validates one's importance (in cyberdom, that is). I recently Googled myself when I was supposed to be working (as all good Googlers do) and learned my "Google number" is 600. That's the amount of Google Web page matches my name produces. It is still trailing well behind my boss, who gets 1,090 matches. No fair -- he has a far more common name. And he happens to share that name with a famous New York Times sportswriter, whose work frequently is posted electronically. Google inflation!

Peck in more names and you realize that, like life, Googling often is arbitrary when distinguishing greatness. The Rolling Stones and the Beatles maintained a healthy rivalry for fans at their peak, but it's no contest online. The Stones turn up only 398,000 matches. John Lennon, going solo, surpasses that, with 415,000, not to mention the collective Beatles (1,920,000). The Bush/Gore political race was a nail-biter. Online, it's no match: George W. Bush scores 1,250,000; Al Gore, 720,000. Pitting recent Oscar nominees against one another, however, is another matter. Denzel Washington won onstage, but on the Web he trails Russell Crowe, 102,000 to 241,000.

All of which shows this celebrity thing is getting a bit out of hand. There are those in public life whose Web presence is so amplified that they crowd out any possibility of, say, getting any useful information on a "normal" person who happens to share their name. Pity Mia West, a San Diego marketing executive who tried in vain to check out a prospective date whose name happened to be Michael Jackson. Suffice it to say, West clicked through page after page of hits and found nothing but information about the one-gloved wonder, who now commands 566,000 matches but, alas, never dated Ms. West.

Given West's frustration, our sympathies go out to the Britney Spearses of the world who aren't that Britney Spears. They'll never know their true standing in Google-land. Spears and her ubiquitous bellybutton score 1,040,000 Googled Web page matches.

Note, for the record, to the famous and filthy-rich Ms. Spears: I am a happily married man. I have no intention of inquiring about your availability for a date, nor am I stalking you.

Well, OK, I am stalking you. But only in the interest of professional journalism. So stop sending me those threatening letters from your lawyers.

I think it's time for me to get back to work.