As if the famous heart attack anecdote isn’t enough, Google is once again saving lives. From the BBC comes a story of how an Australian hostage in Iraq was freed because a Google search convinced his captors he didn’t work for the CIA or a U.S. contractor.
From the story:
[John Martinkus’] executive producer at Australia’s SBS network, Mike Carey, said Google probably saved freelance journalist Martinkus.
“They Googled him and then went onto a web site – either his own or his book publisher’s web site, I don’t know which one – and saw that he was who he was, and that was instrumental in letting him go, I think, or swinging their decision,” he told AP news agency.
My former journalism professor, Sree Sreenivasan, takes it as yet another sign that journalists need their own Web sites. Point taken, Sree.