Recently, I got an email from a man I hadn’t seen or heard from in 25 years.  He’s not a stalker (I think), but he did know an awful lot about me, so it was obvious he’d done some searching around online before writing.  By way of explanation he said, “Everyone is a private eye now that we have Google.” *

Hoo, boy, is that ever true!  And while it’s probably harmless to google your siblings, high school heartthrobs, your boss and your neighbors, you should never, never, EVER google your spouse.  Have you ever seen a movie in which a man had a private detective follow his wife only to be reassured that she really was faithful to him?  Or vice versa?  Of course not.  Go snooping around and there’s a good chance you’ll get answers you don’t want to questions you shouldn’t have asked.

Irresponsible googling nearly lead to divorce in one couple I know.  He googled her and went ballistic when up popped a credit for a porno flick.  Even though he eventually calmed down long enough to discover that it was a credit for catering a porno flick, things remained tense for a long while.

My husband K— has elevated unadvisable googling to an art form.  As search terms, he likes to type in my name along with selected words such as “adultery,” “sex,” “fornication,” “cuckold” and the like, just to see if he gets any results.  I guess he figures that if I cheat on him, it’ll be all over the Internet before he finds out.

And he may be right.  The danger of Google comes from the fact that you and your activities may be documented at all sorts of online sources without your knowledge.  Everything you’ve ever worked on may be credited somewhere.  Everyone to whom you’ve ever told a secret may have a blog.  Some hacker may be getting a perverse thrill out of exposing the fact that you checked The Illustrated Kama Sutra out of the library in 1988 and never returned it.  Heck, your dental X-rays (along with a picture of you) are probably being incorporated into a Japanese computer performance artist’s newest oeuvre called Inside/Out at this very moment.  And don’t even start thinking about all the ways surveillance camera video of you might be displayed online unless you want to have a panic attack.

I’ve come across articles on how bloggers regret their postings and S&M aficionados deny their participation in fetish-specific user groups when they get googled, but never an article about how googling can split up a marriage.  I see a niche that needs to be filled.

If you’re married and you’ve got something to hide, I advise planning your exit strategy in advance.  That way, if your spouse comes up to you one day and says, “Honey, I googled you today,” you won’t crumble and respond with something incriminating like, “Look, I can explain everything…” before you even know it.

The best defense is a good offense, as football has taught me.  Google yourself and know who out there shares your name and what they’ve been up to.  That way, you can ascribe your own questionable activities to them.  Of course, people with unusual names kind of get left out in the cold with this approach, which gives rise to the question of what sort of name it’s best to have in the electronic age.

As part of my research for something I’m doing online (never you mind exactly what), I read a bunch of articles about how parents are choosing baby names these days.  Evidently, lots of parents want their children to have unique names—at least unique enough for Google to come back with something less than forty billion search results.  So they’re googling their choices and eliminating any that are too “popular.”  Bad idea.  That means your child will be eminently traceable.  If I had a child and I was trying to pick a name that would serve her or him well in the future, I’d be looking for something that offers plausible deniability for, well, life’s little infractions.

What someone needs to invent is a DeGoogler.  It would erase a disastrous google in a sort of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind experience.  But until then, husbands and wives need to show a little restraint.  I hope you’ve all learned what a mistake it is to google your mate.  Really.  I mean it.  Get away from the computer.  You’ll just regret it.  Haven’t you been paying attention?  Oh, jeez, now you’ve gone and done it!  Well, I’m not responsible for whatever happens.  Just remember: once you’ve googled, you can never go back.

* By the way, leave it to a couple of guys to found a billion-dollar company, but to misspell the name.  It should be “googol.”