One nice thing about having married someone with a reasonably common last name is that when I google my name, there are so many other people with my name, that it's hard to find anything much about me personally. Now my maiden name is a whole different story. I have a very uncommon Italian maiden name that when put together with my very Irish first name, I am the only one that comes up! Pretty much all google searches from my birth name have to do with my first job out of college and some random innocuous stuff about my father, like bio info from his former job that listed his kids.

There was a kid I went to school with from 5th grade all through HS. He was very smart, the president of many clubs, everyone KNEW he would become a doctor. I had googled him and he did, in fact become a doctor. But he was not on Facebook.

I had checked a few times in several years and then found his Facebook page. Sadly it was a memorial page for him. He had passed from a heart attack and was only 55.

I dont think I have had any but my DH had a horrible one. He works remotely for his company, mostly connected with the office in one city but with a lot of ties to the office in another major city. In conversations with someone in city #2 he learned that a person he worked with on a few other projects had died. The person who mentioned it seemed upset so my husband didnt probe.

He does however love to read obituaries so he googled it. It turns out the guy murdered his soon to be ex-wife, her new boyfriend and then committed suicide.

A Google search shock? This one was a shock but different than the previous ones.

I had a wonderful card making program many years ago & loved making cards personal. For a friend that loved Angels I bought a beautiful ornament & I wanted to use an Angel on the card. I googled "Angel pictures". Oh my all kinds of X rated stuff. Apparently angles do Texas etc. I remember thinking every one would know.

I did look up an old boyfriend, someone I dated a few times shortly after high school who was oh-so-cute and could dance like no one I knew. Lots of fun. He fell asleep at the wheel driving me home from a summer beach party and I was injured, the romance kind of fizzled after that although we did stay in touch several months and his parents came from out of state to visit me while I recovered (and I did fully recover).

He was not my only or most serious boyfriend before being married, but I did look him up on Google a few years ago. He had a successful career, wife and one child, a son named after him. From what I was reading, highly regarded and with many friends. He was stricken with a lesser known progressive disease several years ago, one with a very grim prognosis. From supportive, loving comments I was reading in a public memory book, I suspected he had chosen the timing of his own end. I hope with the blessing of his family.

One night I was just goofing around on the computer. My 50th class reunion is this year. So I googled former classmates to see where they were and what they were up to. After I got to the 6th obit I quit. Guess I don't really want to know!

If anyone here has read my comments to posts related to technology
you know I am sadly inept in that area. That has kept me from googling
anyone out of curiosity because I'm convinced they will discover I was
looking.

But this post made me wonder what would come up if they googled me.

I wonder if that's what happened to me. Someone from my distant past appeared on my Facebook "People You May Know" list. It totally freaked me out.

Cindy, it is probably some sort of algorithm that measures known facts about you such as schools, the cities you've lived in and figures the chances of similar people. I'm not sure how that works but it could be that or someone googled your name.

Holly, he wouldn't have known schools and didn't live in the same city. Google was the first thing that came to mind. I took it as a good opportunity to recheck FB privacy settings.

When I first started dating my DH, I googled his name (as one does). The first thing that came up was a news story about a man who had murdered both his parents, I believe with a shovel. Fortunately, DH shared the same name w/ him only and was not actually said murderer!

I just recently looked up a girl I was very close friends with from around age 6 until college when we lost touch. I was shocked to find she is engaged to a girl, considering she had a great number of boyfriends she was very much in love with over the course of the time we knew each other and never, ever once ever indicated any sort of interest in girls (I wouldn't have cared then and I don't now... just surprising)

I looked up a former manager where I worked just to see what I might find....he was recently arrested for running a major brothel! Well, not him, but someone else with his name! I knew he was into leadership and out of the box thinking, but certainly not that! Really cracked me up!

On a sad note, I looked up a woman I worked with a few decades ago. She had a masters degree and left our co to get a legal degree and became a lawyer. While I worked with her, she was outstanding for her wealth...huge diamonds, furs, even his and hers matching mercedes sports coupes for their anniversary. Imagine the shock I had when I learned that she got divorced, lost all her money, lost her job and she ended up being homeless. Turns out she suffered with bipolar disease. I found all this out through an article about her being one of the first residents in a new low income housing conversion. So then I did further research and found she had passed away only a few months earlier. So shocking and so sad and so totally unexpected.

In the days before Google, I was driving in my hometown. I had a strange feeling, and glanced into the passenger seat, where I swear an ex boyfriend of mine sat. His phone number came to me as clear as day, and when I got home, I called it. His DM said she remembered me, and he had been killed in an accident YEARS before. It had been at least 20 years.....

Last fall I made a shocker of a google discovery that had me stunned for days. Back in college, I had a boyfriend who proposed to me. I said yes, I think because I was too taken aback to say no, as strange as that sounds. Anyway, I ended up leaving that school and him. I never heard another word from him or about him and often wondered what the heck had become of him.

I googled his name but it is common enough so that there were hundreds of hits. So, I googled his name and the name of our university plus the name of his fraternity. Up pops a Facebook page dedicated to his fraternity and the brothers from 50 years ago. I nearly fell out of my chair.

Then came the real shocker. Not only was there a biography of him, but there were pictures from old fraternity parties. There we were together! In some of them we were madly smooching -- actually in most of them. The photographer must have been stalking me because there were so many photos of me at those long ago parties. I was so stunned!!

Evidently he had been married and divorced and was now remarried to a Filipino woman who looked to be half his age. They live in the Philippines.

I also turned up his LinkedIn profile. After much hesitation (and adding a flattering photo of myself), I requested to be connected to him. He accepted my request. It was like we reached out across the years and miles to reconnect in a very small way. No messages, just that. The whole experience felt like something our of The Twilight Zone.

Amazing and haunting stories! Wow! Thanks so much for sharing and keep 'em coming. This is a very interesting read!

I found a girl who I knew from my neighborhood and school who moved away to an all girls college. She looks like she has had different procedures to her face and her Facebook page is full of glamour photos and self photoshopped pictures. Not everything that has been done to her face looks natural and I do feel that it looks noticeable. Makeup seems to exaggerate it. She was always a beauty and I feel sad that she has gone to excess to try and look as she did then. In the photoshopping, she has tried to correct some of it. Friends post on the page how wonderful she looks and on her different hairstyles. I don't remember her being so focused on her appearance. She was just a natural beauty who had an effortless charm and was always happy and laughing.

I don't think she would have looked bad if she had done nothing to her face. She'd still be beautiful. I felt sad when I saw her efforts to correct what she is obviously unhappy about. I would probably tell her she's beautiful as all her friends have done because she is a beautiful person. Warm and funny and caring and just like her mom was. She's always been a beauty inside.

I've recently realized that thanks in large part to social media and online forums over the past couple of decades, I have very little "unresolved" mysteries having to do with people from my past, and there's something strangely satisfying in that to me. I know how the lives of exes have moved on (and have been assured beyond certainty that the "ex" designation is exactly where I need them in my life ;-)), and I have reconnected at some point with just about everyone I was friends (not merely acquaintances) with in my younger days. Before all of these online outlets came into being, I will say that I did hold on to a few little "what ifs", but for me the not knowing - and the resultant imagining - was always vastly more romantic and appealing than the reality. Doesn't that just figure?

"I did hold on to a few little "what ifs", but for me the not knowing - and the resultant imagining - was always vastly more romantic and appealing than the reality. "

I couldn't agree more. When I joined Classmates, I reached out to an old boyfriend from h.s. He was a great guy at the time but through our email exchanges and a photo I came across (he obviously isn't into healthy eating and fitness as I am), it was obvious we would not have been compatible for the long haul. Not a real "what if" because I haven't given him much thought over the years but satisfying never the less:). Being able to catch up with long ago friends/acquaintances through social media has made me realize all the more how fortunate I've been and has further validated the choices I've made over the years. The internet is ah-maze-ing!!

It wasn't through Google, but I was looking at my home town (on the other coast) newspaper online. I happened to see an article about a man being arrested for killing his wife in my mother's home town nearby. I was shocked to see that it was someone I knew from business. I distinctly remember having a conversation with him about his living in that town. Blew me away.

Eandhl2, I had a similar experience to your Angels search. There is a charming Canadian-American artist named Trisha Romance, her work focuses on family and home in a sweet, nostalgic, loving way. In looking for information about her a long while back, I found instead "Tricia" romance, which is, apparently, threesomes. Yeek!

I googled an old friend from high school. It turned up an article about a minister (not my friend) who had been accused of child molestation. My friend was quoted in the article with a statement of support for the minister and disbelief in the charges. While I only know what I read in the article, I know that abusers often appear completely innocuous, so my friend's knee-jerk defense rankled a bit. Both my friend's first and last name are pretty unusual, so I don't doubt it was the same person.

I've shared this before. About 15 years ago I was helping my daughter with her homework. She was doing a report about bears so we got on the computer to see what we could find. I'm not even sure we used Google but we did use some search engine. Well, I typed in "bears", shrieked and quickly closed the page. I had no idea that the word is a nickname for hairy, gay men!

This reminded me to go look up an ex with whom I parted friends. I knew he married and moved west. Well, no life-changing shockers -- but the skinny nerd I once knew is now twice the size he was, and still a nerd (in a good way), and has published two books.

I often try to find my first boyfriend, but his name is too common and he probably has little interest in the Internet, unlike the guy mentioned above, who has left various footprints in cyberspace.

Years ago, I surfed for my own name, and found that I'm apparently a musician who teaches composition out on the west coast. I ordered one of "my" CD's by phone back then (she didn't have online ordering enabled), and the guy I ordered from was bemused that our names were the same. It's nice having a CD in my rack with my name on it! (Although I admit my tastes don't mesh with hers.)

I would imagine the guy who got the biggest search-engine shock of this week was this poor fellow, who I can only imagine ended up shocked that this screen cap he published (and left up for six hours) likely ended his political career.

I like to look up people from my past, too. I have found some criminal activity, but nothing too crazy.

One of my friends and I have a pact: if one of us dies, the surviving one will delete the other's browser history. :D

early in the days of the internet, I was searching for something at work and made the mistake of entering whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov. Ooops!

My goodness- criminals, murderers, fat and unattractive. Hasn't anyone located an old flame/friend that has exceeded expectations? I guess that's what they find when they Google you. :-)

Jen says: Amazing and haunting stories! Wow! Thanks so much for sharing and keep 'em coming. This is a very interesting read!

I think Daphne du Maurier could write a wonderfully haunting novel with some of these stories!

"My goodness- criminals, murderers, fat and unattractive. Hasn't anyone located an old flame/friend that has exceeded expectations?"

Yes ... my first serious crush (we dated a few times, he broke my heart) is now a very successful attorney, with his own practice in a large city, and has won many prestigious awards. It surprised me because he was such a party guy, and not serious about school (made bad grades, didn't seem very bright). And wow, he's still a total hunk at 50. Damn. :D

C'mon Annie D, don't leave us hanging... What's different about .com??? I'm scared to click on the link!

Why is it that it is about boyfriends? I also did a snoop Google about E. McDougal. His sis was one of my best buddies in college and I was a freq. guest at their home. If I ever longed for a perfect family, this was the one. I was shocked to learn E's son was a serious drug dealer that had been sentenced to prison for a looong time. I can't imagine what "nurture" element drove him to this. Kindest people where all had post grad degrees. Also learned his sis is high up at the NSA but I could never get in touch with her

my first true HS love, of whom my mom disapproved b/c he was 2-3 older than me and versed in the ways of the world, ( moms code for he s*****d around) is a 2 bit magician in Vegas. Oh lord, did Mom save my life!

First BIL had juvenile diabetes and I remember it came up in every conversation that he was not to live beyond 35. Snoop googled and he is past mid-century, married and has a child. I wonder what it has been like to live with an official death sentence post 35...

Hasn't anyone located an old flame/friend that has exceeded expectations? I guess that's what they find when they Google you. :-)

LOL! Well, a young man I dated briefly in the 80s is now a Brigadier General in the United States Air Force. He's definitely a success story, and is still hanging on to a bit of the handsomeness that he had in his 20s.

Oh the stories! I've looked up people on FB, but have not googled for people.

Annie-We also discovered the whitehouse.com site when one of the kids was in elementary school doing a book report. Oops, it's a porn site.

Success story-My first real boyfriend is now a very successful oral surgeon, and still a real hottie.

Beagles, I saw that! haha

for those who couldn't't see the image closely, it's of a screen shot sent out by Mike Webb. A conservative running for Congress. He forgot to close out his previous searches. Porn sites that he visited.

I Googled a classmate from my freshman English classes in college. Turned out that he and his wife had just donated 35 MILLION dollars to our university!

Well nothing like the $35 million from the post above!

But I dated a guy in HS--a hood, guess that's why I liked him. He had made a type of "bomb" (so he called it) and blew off a couple of his fingers in HS, would throw eggs out of his car, siphon gas (mid 70s) and do burnouts in his sports car leaving our driveway.

Needless to say my dad did not like him!

Well, now he has some type of cable company (don't understand what he does but he employs a lot of people, has had the business for 20+ years). Plus he owns a few very nice successful restaurants that have been around for 20+ years. Plus there is some boy scout (ha!) reserve named after him. Just shows you never can tell!

A guy from my boarding school was actively involved in regime change in a South American country in the nineties. Another person from my school married and had a several years long affair with the spouse's parent, then committed suicide in a particularly awful way.

I don't google people now as I would rather live in my fantasy world of rainbows and unicorns where people behave nicely and wear slightly dowdy but non-threatening cardigans and penny loafers.

...and pearls, don't forget the pearls:)

I'm amazed that y'all can find your exes via Google. I tried to find one of mine, and came up empty. We parted friends but I didn't want to get back together with him or anything, just see how he was doing because I did love him. I think he got married and I hope he is happy. I like to think of myself as pretty good with Google, but I came up empty. He liked living "off the grid" anyway so I hope that is the reason.

I've done these types of searches myself. One thing that I discovered is that Ancestry.com can be used for living people as well as dead people. Old newspaper articles, marriages, divorces, jobs they have held, etc. It's a wealth of information and not just for genealogy.

I've had mostly pleasant Google surprises rather than shocks, when Googling old boyfriends. Overall, it seems their lives turned out not only happy and healthy (so far, knock wood) but pretty much as they planned: English major turned English teacher, journalism major turned journalist, free spirited long-haired beach bum turned, ummm, guy who lives very well although not technically 'employed', on the beach in an Asian country where (at least before legalization) he could more readily access his favorite herb. All three former bf's still married to their original wives, even.

Regarding old friends and roommates I'd lost track of...I've had some surprises there as well. A roommate I thought would marry the rabbinical scholar her parents would find for her, I found married to someone who could not be farther from it--literally, could never have imagined the match she made and I would love to know (though would never ask) how they came to be together. A classmate who I did not appreciate much but who was part of a group of friends I belonged to in college is a well-regarded writer with a home featured in the NYT for its style. Another classmate was featured in the NYT Vows section, and I started to wonder whether I was the only one from the rural midwest who didn't move to NYC and live with such flair! I've never even been in the local paper.

And, oh, the prettiest girl in my high school is still the prettiest. And the very handsome boy I had a perpetual crush on but who couldn't have picked me out of a lineup is still extremely (I mean really!) good looking but his politics are so out of line with mine I can't really regret not making his cut. Thank you, Facebook!

When I was a freshman in HS I had a huge crush on a senior. Someone told him and he proceeded to woo me to his car one evening at a dance. I didn't do what he wanted me to do and there was a little bit of a struggle to get out of the car. Shortly thereafter, he was spreading rumors about all the nasty things we did in his car.

I googled him a few years ago and found that he's a minister.

My sister recently Googled the little brother of sisters we were good friends with in elementary school. He was infant thru preschool when we knew them. There was a nice write up in the local Big Name U paper about he and his wife endowing a chair (I think it was). He looks like Ron Howard and, at one time, owned half of the Golden State Warriors!

We both still think he's about 3 years old.

Months after my husband died, I decided I should inform the woman he was engaged to before me.

The shock was that she died two months after my DH!

My DH had glioblastoma multiforme (deadliest brain cancer)

His prior died of lung cancer and never smoked

My stepson said that must have walked through the same Gamma Ray as there is no explanation for why they died of those cancers.

TR, these are interesting stories! Now y'all have got me thinking about Googling former friends and boyfriends. I did Google a fraternity sister from college a year or so ago, but was unable to find her online, though apparently her parents still live in the same small town.

It's not a Google thing, but years ago I worked for a small manufacturing company. I was out on vacation for a week and when I came back I learned one of the guys from the shop had been murdered by his girlfriend. He was just an acquaintance, but it was still quite a shock at the time.

Donna

Way back in the early days of the internet, I looked for a friend of mine. We had worked together years before and became friends but our contact dwindled to once or twice a year. Most unfortunately, our contact was timed with the other's injury/illness, through no fault of the other. One time, I had called him and chatted for hours on Christmas Eve (he later told me he was contemplating suicide and our chat prevented that). A couple of years later, I called him and didn't hear back for a week; he had a mild heart attack and was hospitalized. A couple years after that, he called me and I had a (fairly serious) sports injury. I moved away and we tried to be better about the contact (we didn't only want to talk about illness/injury!) but we only spoke a couple times a year despite our good intentions. I visited him last in 1994. In early 1996, I called him to catch up but he didn't return my call. Called again a couple months later....and a couple months later....nothing. Sent a letter....nothing. Then the phone number was hooked up to a fax machine; sent a fax...nothing. Fast forward to early 1997. I searched his name and what do I find? He was murdered by someone he met in a chat room in early 1996. I went back to my phone bills and see I called him the day after his murder. Had I called one day earlier.....

This thread "inspired" me to check out a former roommate from hell. Looks like she is under investigation for fraud. Wild!

My mom was curious as to what a certain classmate of mine was up to. I Googled him, and discovered that his sister,who was is my sister's class, had died of melanoma this past december. She was 33 and had 4 girls. I was shocked because my high school only had about 130 students total,and we are usually aware when something like this happens. Sad.