I went to search Google today and discovered that Google knew it was my birthday. How did I discover that? The Google Doodle had a set of birthday cakes for the word “Google”. And when I hovered over it…it said “Happy birthday, Jeff”.

First thing I though “Wow, that’s cool!”. Then I started to think about it and I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. Then I thought, “Wow, that’s creepy!”.

I’ve been going back and forth for a couple of hours trying to decide if I like this or not. I’m leaning more towards the “I like it” side of things, although it does come with the realization that Google knows a lot about me. Having recently read Googled by Ken Auletta, I’m not surprised by this development on my Google search page. I don’t really share Ken’s fear of the future. I know that a lot of what we do online will be public knowledge one way or the other. The simplest way to avoid that…don’t put certain things online. If I didn’t want anybody to know my birthday, I wouldn’t have put it on my Facebook or Google+ profiles. But thinking back, I honestly don’t remember if Google+ allowed me to create my account without a birthday. Facebook did when I originally created my account, but that was so long ago that the requirements for account creation may have changed.

So why bother with this post? Well, it’s because I didn’t realize that Google would use my data that way. As I’ve thought more and more about it, I’m fine with it. But if you’re reading this, I don’t know if you knew that your birthday would be used this way. And if you didn’t know, now you do.

So consider this my public announcement. What you do with this knowledge is up to you!