Google Suggests changing your name, I suggest google is out of touch with tech.

Image search? You won't even need to go that far. Just put the person's current name into Google, and let it suggest, "Did you mean [previous name]?"

What was the exact quote please? Including the surrounding conversation...<p>I find it strange that people keep writing about what he said, without writing what he actually said, including the context...

danah boyd has a great post on this: <a href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/08/16/name-changes-reputation.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/08/16/name-ch...</a><p>Summary: "First, it completely contradicts historical legal trajectories where name changes have become increasingly more difficult. Second, it fails to account for the tensions between positive and negative reputation. Third, it would be so exceedingly ineffective as to be just outright absurd."<p>She provides strong evidence for all of these.

As I see it, Eric's suggestion was indeed quite ridiculous, but the problem itself is not. Your digital past can really backfire or harm your future chances in life.<p>[Maybe the people screening candidates based on their past need to stop and think about the things they did as a teenager.]<p>Maybe yes, but what if they will not stop doing such screening? The the problem Eric tried to solve still remains.

The solution to image search is plastic surgery, of course.

Google's founders certainly weren't concerned with their collegiate life being permanent record.<p><a href="http://digg.com/tech_news/First_Google_Site_" rel="nofollow">http://digg.com/tech_news/First_Google_Site_</a> points at <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021030152640/www-db.stanford.edu/~sergey/photos/drag96.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20021030152640/www-db.stanford.ed...</a> (Sergey Brin)

They're not only out of touch with tech, they're out of touch with society as well. Changing your name is not without social stigma.

It is pretty ridiculous in the form presented. It certainly doesn't scale. Having said that, there are sometimes sensible options around changing what most people search for.<p>Marriage is an obvious example. But even if you are just applying for a job, if you use a different version if your name, the search results can be very different. Compare the results for "will critchlow" and "william critchlow".

There needs to be some kind of NoFollow attribute for 'social objects.'

I would like to see Eric Schmidt trying it himself.

Eric Schmidt's comments are being taken out of context. His statements were a warning that unless young people particularly start taking their online privacy seriously, they may be left with no recourse for erasing their online past, short of some extreme measure like changing their name. But he was not "suggesting" to change one's name - rather, he was warning about the dangers of diminished online privacy.