Eric Zorn's column in the Chicago Tribune of 12/29 (I'm cleaning out my temporary bookmarks, okay?) is alternately funny and surprising, raising a point that I, in my webophilia, hadn't considered.
Would you be angry with me if I googled your sister?
The reason I ask is because a good friend recently turned on me when I let drop I'd googled her younger sister. She used bad words, expressions of disgust and ... insinuations.
One of us was out of line. I think she was, but I'm open to the possibility that I provoked her with an offense against the great and largely unwritten code of civilized behavior on the Internet when, in an idle moment, I typed her sister's name into the great search engine at google.com.
That's not rude. Is it?
Zorn goes on to explain that he often googles familiar names when he's bored. Well, so do I. I thought everybody did. I'm tickled when I actually find them, and I'm amused when I find other people with the same name. Apparently, there's a politician of some note in New Zealand who has the same name as a good friend of mine.
Heck, I google myself. (Note: None of these people is me.)
Is it an invasion of your privacy if I google you?
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