Google is Totally Stalking Me

I love Google. Unabashedly. Even though it really messed up several of my writing streams of revenue with the Panda updates, even though I get very annoyed at it thinking it knows better than I do what I want (though that has either calmed down a bit, or I've gotten used to it), still, I love it.

Google gets me.

As an excellent example, quite some time ago I was trying to recall the name of a movie I'd seen. I knew there were two kids in it, something about black rocks, and in the end there were aliens that came and took the kids away. So I Googled "movie black rocks aliens take kids". Bam! Right there on the first page of results was the movie ("Knowing", if you hadn't figured it out already). I tried the same search on Bing (this was when Bing first came out) -- I got through 10 pages of results without finding any reference to the actual correct movie before I quit.

Granted, this was several years ago now and the search engines have improved (or there's been more information/searching for that movie); today a Google search brings up the correct movie in the first four results, and again a few later, so five of ten results; Bing has the correct movie in the first and fourth result, but that's the only time of the first ten.

At any rate, I've always had very good luck with Google, and often find things that others have trouble locating. (Honestly, I'm not being immodest by saying that I kind of have a reputation for being the one who can always find things online.)

Lately, however, my love affair with Google is starting to feel a little creepy. Google is stalking me. I say this because whenever I search for something that has any commercial value, it's just about guaranteed that within the next few days I'll start getting spam email regarding that topic. Last month I had a tax client who sold a condo they co-owned with three other couples, and had used both personally and as a rental. I was researching the proper tax treatment of the sale, and looked at how timeshares are treated since this was essentially the same thing. Suddenly, I started getting a lot of emails along the lines of "Sell Your Timeshare Fast"  and "We Buy Timeshares", etc. We bought a foreclosure home recently, and I was looking up some of the details about that process -- of course, now I'm inundated with foreclosure spam.

Granted, I've gotten spam about timeshares and foreclosures regularly for years -- but it seems to pick up in intensity after a Google search. We had to get a new laundry tub a few months ago, and I looked at several options because we decided to make it a dog grooming tub, as well. Sure enough, now I'm getting spam about tubs (and walk-in tubs for people, which I did accidentally click on a few times in my search). I looked into home warranties recently, and now I get spam about home warranties every day.

The interesting -- and creepier still -- thing is that the spam doesn't come to my Google-associated email. It comes to the email I have listed as a "back-up" in case my primary address isn't working.

I will acknowledge that there is the possibility that I've been getting this spam all along, and just have become more aware of it after I've done a search for something. I haven't taken the time to catalog how many spam messages I received on a subject before and after searching for it. It just seems quite coincidental, and of course the conspiracy theorist in me shouts 'Of course Google is stalking you! What do you expect? They're probably reporting all of your online activity back to The Man, too!'. (I try to keep my inner conspiracy theorist quiet, but sometimes she just breaks free.)

Even if Google isn't really stalking me, the fact that I'm even thinking it is means there's something wrong in our relationship. I don't trust Google like I used to, and that's kind of sad....

Truth in Advertising? Not Exactly....

(Yeah, I know, I suck at blogging. I can't imagine why -- I'm constantly writing on forums and e-mail, but I've just never been able to get into the habit of writing a blog. I'm working on it.)

Image via CrunchBase

There's been a commercial on TV lately for AT&T's wireless network. It says something along the lines of "AT&T has the only wireless network that lets your iPhone talk and surf the web at the same time." OK, that might technically be true, but to me it's stretching the truth a bit (or, perhaps, focusing too much on the details).

The Monkey on My Back

My name is Jennifer, and I'm a Pepsi-holic. I don't remember when I started drinking Pepsi, exactly.  I know we didn't really have pop in the house when I was kid, so it must have been sometime in college--probably in the dorm, when I had free access to the cafeteria pop machine for meals and a convenient vending machine after hours. I know I was buying Pepsi in glass bottles when I was living in an apartment off campus, at any rate. (Ah, Pepsi in glass bottles! It doesn't taste nearly as good in plastic bottles, and I've never liked cans.)

Why Hanged for a Sheep?

There's a saying that "it's just as easy to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb", meaning, apparently, that since the punishment is the same, if you're going to steal livestock you might as well steal big. Which doesn't exactly relate to me, since I don't plan on stealing any livestock and I don't really even like to eat lamb or mutton. But, I figured that since I have a writing blog, my Newcastle Boxers blog, and I write for the Boxers 101 blog, I might as well have a personal blog, too. Go big, right? (I actually wanted "In for a Penny" - as in, "in for a pound", but it was taken in several different variations. Besides, I graduated from Moo U - I should go with an agricultural theme.)

So, here I am, trying yet again to get into the habit of blogging. We'll see how it goes this time - my other blogs are already woefully out of date, but maybe if I can start posting on one blog per day I'll get into the habit. It will certainly be easier for me to post daily across several different blogs than to post on the same blog every day. Maybe.