Me, Myself And She.(The Technologist; INTERNET)

Byline: Jessica Bennett

Eve Fairbanks knew something was up when her mother drove six hours to her college to have lunch with her. After a meal of risotto came the moment of truth: "I know about the porn," her mother told her. It was an honest mistake: Eve's name had been showing up on X-rated sites when her mother Googled her to keep tabs. But that Eve Fairbanks wasn't her Eve -- it was a "Googleganger," a virtual doppelganger linked by a shared name thanks to the search engine Google.

Much the way "Google" became a common verb, the term "Googleganger" has caught on with a generation defined not so much by their accomplishments as by how Google-able those accomplishments are. A Googleganger, they're finding, can be friend or foe or a bit of both.

Matthew Slutsky considers his virtual double, for instance, to be a rival in a race to the top of the Google hit list. "Knowing that he's out there keeps me on my toes," says the 26-year-old Washington political blogger. But it's a friendly rivalry: Slutsky has met his Googleganger on Facebook.

The problem of duplicate names is older than Google, of course, but search engines have made it harder to ignore. Robert Fischer found it annoying when, as a 10-year-old ...