Mountain View (CA) – Search engine behemoth Google introduced a set of tools helping people who want to “look themselves up on the Internet” but have really dull names.
The search index now includes a profiling feature that will help egotists with somewhat dull names discover themselves.
The number of John Smiths, David Jones, and Ramesh Patels out of the six billion people on the planet won’t be known until we have a world government and an international census. Try a search on “John Smith” and you’ll get the picture.
A search on “Wolfgang Gruener” or “Mike Magee” narrows down the results significantly, although apparently there is an American soccer player called Mike Magee, as well as a Dr Mike Magee. Magee, to my knowledge, only played soccer when he was a child, 500 years ago. Perhaps Mike Magee needs to see Dr Mike Magee but that is a different matter.
While Google may seem to be giving the opportunity to folk to ego-boost themselves online, they can only access the Profile feature if they sign up. And that increases the possibility of Google persuading them to use additional services.
