'UnGoogleables' Hide From Search - Meet the privacy-conscious folks who carefully manage to evade the omniscient eye of the monster search engine and its web-crawling minions, living one stray e-mail or election ballot away from discovery. By Ann Harrison. [Security Blanket]

I believe that inforamtion sharing through online search engines like Google is a wonderful development that should be cherished. The thought of an all-compasing database of information covering almost all people and topics twenty years ago would have been a dream. Today, the dream is a reality.

Anything that we could ever want is at the access of our fingertips or voice command. We can order dinner, search for movie times, apply for jobs, and conveniently, run background checks on our neighbors. Well, as close to a background check as we have come in the twenty first century – we can Google them.

Need to check out if a babysitter is qualified before you leave them alone with your children? Questioning whether your new girlfriend is really a doctor? Want to research details a car’s history before you decide to buy it? Simple answer, Google ‘em.

There are, however some people out there who believe that their information should not be shared. They think that this access to unlimited information about a person or place is an invasion of privacy. They are taking actions to prevent their identity presence in online resources like Google. If their privacy is worth the extra fuss, then so be it, they should limit their information shared. But for the record, I think that these actions are ridiculous.

Yes, there is a certain amount of doubt that can be assumed by a stranger "googling" your name to find your history, but the type of information released on these sites is limited and often reveals little more than your profession, organizations that you're involved in, and newspaper articles that you have been mentioned in. Your bank account number, social security number, family history, and address are not likely to show up through a Google search unless you want them to.

On the other hand, the information provided online is a hugely valuable resource. In a world when best friends were strangers that you met on a subway a month ago, first dates are people that introduced themselves in a bar, and job applicants could be concealing a serious criminal record, I believe that Google gives us a stable, reliable insight into a world of strangers.

Google doesn’t have an agenda against anyone, it reveals what others have said about you or what you have involved yourself in. It doesn’t make the information, it merely searches through information that has already been written, chances are that you are aware of the original publication. Providing others with access to information gives them security to continue to develop trust. Google, along with other search engines like Yahoo, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves help people.

So, to those who question Google: if you are worried about someone finding information about you that you don’t want them to know, DON’T DO IT! Clearly, you’re scared of having a secret revealed to the public, and if you’re really that worried about it, don’t involve yourself in activities or organizations that could use the internet accessed by search engines, use a false name, or change your name all together. But if you are worried about it, don’t attack the providers: Google helps more people that it hurts.