no thanks...

I read on three different news sites today that some former Google folks had designed a new search engine.

Google creeps me out a bit with their whole "all knowing, all seeing, all remembering" business plan, and that Google car that's driving around the planet taking photos of where we live and work and shop REALLY creeps me out.
The stand alone is Google Earth, it make me smile.

So my first thought on this search engine is "hoorah, I'll try it out."
Costs nothing but the information my computer supplies them with about who I am and all that, lets see how it works.

I type in the address, nothing that rolls off the tongue like Google or that having "-ing", "-ed" added to it might create new dictionary entries for the 21st century.

I like the page that opens, all black with just a white search window and the site name directly over it. Beneath is the boast of 121,617,892,992 web pages available for search.

Sounds and looks good so far.

I'm no stranger to Googling myself and I can comfortably predict the five or six hits that genuinely pertain to me when I do. I've done interviews with "the news", a magazine and one year our anniversary party ended up as a review for the restaurant we chose.
Typing my name in quotes, out of quotes, makes no difference, there I am.

Not at this new gig.

Type... first name, space, last name, enter... nothing about me. The guy who draws Batman, yes, me no.

Add quotes... enter... nothing.

Type www. my name .com ... nothing, despite my personal website being right there online. Even added "http://" ... zip, nada.

I had a brief fear I may have been erased from the web, that maybe there was a conspiracy brewing and I was about to become entangled in a bigger, more sinister plot than Jody Foster in "Flight Plan", but a quick turn at Google found me, no quotes, no http, right at the top of the hit list of 1,370,000.

When I clicked both the "about" and "privacy" buttons for the site I got this:



So much giving Google a run for their money, as far as I'm concerned.

**Full disclosure:
One half hour later the error messages were gone and the privacy and info pages were available.
I, however, still fell through the cracks in their web.