Bad Googles & Alter Egos

Over at On the Fence, Kelly Nestruck was inspired by a national post column to talk about "bad googles" and how to beat them. I appreciated his story as I'm a big fan of legal threats as a strategy for personal improvement.

Anyways, I thought I'd share my own "bad google" story although it's more a case of having an international alter ego.

Let me introduce you to Michael Vogel-Delaney. Also known as Michael Crook, he has become relatively infamous for his on-line campaigns against the US army. He owns a large number of domains and last January he put himself under the microscope of media scrutiny by ransoming a digital camera he found which belonged to a member of the US Armed Forces.

His rise to infamy was fuelled by a number of websites he created the most well known of which was called "forsake the troops". Many did not appreciate the sentiment expressed on this and similar sites and so these days when one googles the name we share, the first result, thankfully, is this blog but it is followed by a blog interview of the other Michael Crook, a wikipedia entry outlining Mr. Crook's failed projects and a site declaring that Michael Crook is a number one asshole.

I've actually sent Mr. Crook an e-mail asking if I could purchase the michaelcrook.org domain where he currently locates his personal website. He informed me that he has no intention of selling and that he was aware of my blog and read it occasionally. I guess I'll just have to find ways to get more websites talking about me if I ever want to have a clean "personal google".