Adam McNett was going about his Internet business one day when a newspaper reporter asked him a somewhat controversial question: Would he "Google" himself?

"I'm a little hesitant to do that," the senior biology student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale said.

"I've had friends who have "Google-d" me before."

With a tinge of trepidation, McNett typed his name into the search box and hit enter. What popped up? Statistics from the Illinois High School Association boys' basketball state final team in 1998.

"You know, to me it's very helpful, but scary, because you can pretty much put anything in and something will come up," McNett, a Quincy native, said. "It's kind of a reality check that the Internet is that powerful."

In Linda Sudano's third-grade classroom at Elkville Elementary School, the power of Google came in handy recently when her students wanted to enter a radio contest to "countrify" the school lunch menu as part of National School Lunch Week activities. They needed to have words and phrases that could make a cheeseburger something special.

So they turned to the Internet.

They turned to Google.

"In Google (we) keyed in 'country slang,'" she said. "There are hundreds of ideas."

The results: phrases like corn "sweeter than a July ham" and "stick 'em up" fries.

Once a tool and a word known only by computer geeks and Internet freaks, Google has crept into the everyday lives of many Southern Illinoisans. Many of us still ask: "Where did it come from?"

Google started as a play on the word googol - which means the number 1 followed by 100 zeros - when it became a Web site developed by two Stanford University students in 1998.

Slowly at first, then more quickly, it spread throughout the World Wide Web as one of the most used search engines on the planet and has become such a popular, goofy word it now has a place in popular dictionaries.

Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English defines the verb Google in two ways: "to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine" or "to search for information on the Internet, especially using the Google search engine."

According to information from Google's press center, it has the largest index of Web pages in the world and its search engine comprises billions of Web pages. And it can all be done in half a second.

But not everyone has gone Google. Even some people whose work would seem to benefit from the search engine don't use it.

Durwood Hurst, a private investigator from Carbondale, said he has never had to run a Google search on anyone. While he said Google is a great search engine, as a certified investigator he subscribes to online databases that will let him find very detailed information about someone he's searching for.

"(Google) is a little more broad," he said. "If I ever ran into a blank wall I might try it."

How broad can Google be? If you type the word "Saluki" into Google's search engine, you'll be faced with 1,390,000 results.

How do educators feel about students using Google to help with their research?

When Susan Tulis walks by the rows of students using computers in Morris Library on the SIUC campus, she said it's inevitable she'll run across those who are using Google either for recreational or educational purposes.

"If you walked through the library and talked to every third student (they're) using it or playing solitaire," she said.

"Much to my dismay," Tulis was quick to add.

As the associate dean of information services for the library, Tulis said the students who use Google as a primary source of information are part of the generation of young people who think everything is available on the Internet.

"You can't be certain what you're getting off of Google," she said. "As we all know it's the age of information overload."

But does Tulis Google?

"When I don't know a trivia contest or crossword puzzles, that's the best thing to go to," she said.

As for McNett, the student who finally Google-d himself and was overcome by the power of the Internet search engine, he says he'll continue to use Google for class research.

But that's about all he'll use it for.

"For personal use, I'll steer clear of it," he said.

kristen.cates@thesouthern.com

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