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Self-googling will not sound as vain or egotistic as it may seem if it means that an individual can be aware of what information the internet holds about him or her. To me, it's a form of "damage control". 

Survey shows that majority of adult internet users in the US Google themselves. Just shows that more people are becoming aware of how it may be difficult to detach their online selves from their offline lives.

Ilse Aigner, Germany's minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection, who usually concentrates on issues over rotten meat, genetically engineered corn and imitation cheese, recently took on a different kind of issue: the Internet and data privacy. Suddenly Aigner finds herself facing online giants Amazon, Facebook and, above all, Google. Soon Google plans to send cars equipped with cameras out onto Germany's roads once again for the company's Street View project. Aigner is now insisting that Google should ask permission before violating the privacy of German citizens. The minister's attack and the following discussions reveal just how divided the German government is when it comes to the online world. The debate revolves around questions of national security and individual self-determination on the Internet. But it also concerns the power of the large giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and MySpace, as well as the question of what these companies are doing with the records of our everyday data, and how they will be able to obtain information from us, influence us or perhaps even control us in the future. It seem like, once again, a German politician is exploiting the popular issue of internet privacy and censorship in a superficial way in the hope of scoring political points.