Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Google - so powerful and so scary

In an inspired moment, I decided to try and find a friend who I hadn't seen for 20 years. I knew his name and was fairly certain that he lived in France and might be connected to the wine trade.

Step 1 Put his name into Google
Step 2 Read carefully the many references to him
Step 3 Write to any site that might be remotely connected asking for his email address
Step 4 Found and noted the town were he is based
Step 5 Used pages blancs (online phone directory) to search, using his name and town
Step 6 Spoke to his wife

Pretty scary really. It took me 40 minutes to find a long lost friend without any hard information other than his name. He has just emailed me.

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