Google conspiracy theories

Ego surfing is fun and educational.  That's how I discovered that my articles for ZDNet had gotten picked up by subsidiaries that write in funny characters (Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Korean...Korean is the neatest looking).  What's even more fun is to run those articles through babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com) and see what falls out.  It does a passable job from Russian, but Korean ends up sounding like poetry as written by a guy suffering from a severe acid flashback.

That, however, is not why I'm making this post.  I recently discovered that searching for ' "John Carroll"  ZDNet ' (the only way to wade through all the other John Carroll's who had the cheek to steal my name) results in 444,000 matched documents, but only two pages of results.  If I type ' "John Carroll" ZDNet -zdnet.com ', though (thus removing results from zdnet.com), I get fewer hits, but lots of pages of results.

Crank up the conspiracy engine.  Various articles have referenced the feud between CNET and Google.  Likewise, we all know that Google and Microsoft is in the middle of a battle royale over a certain Dr. Lee.  Watch out how hard you pull, guys.  He might split in half, unless he's one of those "Stretch Armstrong" toys from the 1970s, in which case he'll eventually get pulled so far that a bunch of stuff resembling maple syrup will fall out.

So, which is it, Google?  Am I bad because I write for a subsidiary of CNET, or bad because I work for Microsoft?  Or, does the two combined make me super-evil, and should I be placed on a shelf next to the likes of Stalin, Jeffrey Dahmer and Lex Luthor?  If so, can I wear a black cape?