This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Michael Cote.
Original Post: Is Google Stalking OK? from PeopleOverProcess.com
Feed Title: Cote's Weblog: Coding, Austin, etc.
Feed URL: https://cote.io/feed/
Feed Description: Using Java to get to the ideal state.
During Tim O’Reilly’s keynote last night here at SAP TechEd ‘07, he said that we’ve become the bionic man. Namely, that we’re (well, us here, dear readers) always hooked up to the web, hand on laptop.
Naturally, when I meet a new person, I Google the hell out of them. I want to find flickr, Facebook, blogs, old USEnet posts, everything.
This has been normal for me sine the days of BBSes and gopher, and I do it all the time now — I was just hunting down Jeff Nolan’s flickr stream.
Put another way, “Google Stalking” is in no way weird to me.
Turns out, it seems to freak other people out.
Indeed, recently someone asked me if it was ethical, even legal to Google Stalk someone who’d applied for a job. That is, would it be discrimination if you decided not to hire someone because, well, those last 3 months of blog posts just made them seem like an asshole?
My first reaction, of course, is that it’s totally ethical. But, the number of times that people have asked me about this topic makes me wonder if there is something, well, weird going on there.
What do you think, dear readers? Will we see a law-suit and resulting HR policy along the lines of “don’t Google Stalk potential employees”?
Previous Topic
