Early Thursday morning, Google News shutdown for hours before coming back online with a new feature – little YouTube thumbnails next to news stories. When clicked, users were taken to YouTube news videos. Cool, I guess. But it seems as though these changes caused a worldwide Google sh!tstorm never before seen – Google search wouldn’t load, nor YouTube, nor any Site running Google ads. Basically, half the damn Internet was down for the count. It’s like their servers caught the Google flu.

Needless to say, we started freaking out – along with everybody else. It was so bad, we even used Yahoo search for the first time in years. And while the outages only lasted a little more than an hour, it made us realize exactly how totally and completely f**ked everything would be if Google really went down for any significant amount of time. Kinda makes that whole ‘Internet monopoly’ investigation seem a bit more important, wouldn’t you say?

Fine, it’s a little narcissistic but you may be surprised in what you find when you Google your very own name. Sure, there is the normal stuff including IMDB pages, Associated Content, maybe even a few accomplishments.

But what you may be shocked to see are the indiscretions as well. Upon Googling herself, a friend of mine recently discovered that when she was pulled over and arrested for a DUI it wound up on the Daily News.com. The truly alarming part was not the write up but the interview with police and the use of her address.

There it was clear as day her name, age, address and a quote saying that she was clearly wasted. As if central booking and alcohol programs weren’t enough, apparently public embarrassment is also a prerequisite.

You may also be surprised to find that based on how often the article or site is read the higher up on the list it goes. Just as she felt at peace and the article had moved over to page three, she told her friends about it and based on the hits it was back on top. (more…)