This week Sesame Street’s 40th birthday, and everyone is celebrating. Google is honoring the fabulous Muppet-tastic show with a prime spot for Cookie Monster (surrounded by cookies—none of this “sometimes food” nonsense,” please). And we’re reminiscing ...

Yesterday’s cautionary tale about Googling your date got me thinking. My last blind date (before which I did no investigation) was seriously a nightmare.

As Tom and I sat down for a glass of wine, he launched right in: “I am under investigation by the Federal Government.” I smiled and laughed. “I’m serious,” he said with a strangely vacant smile. “What for?” I asked shifting in my seat and starting to sweat a little bit. “They are accusing me of insider trading, but I’m innocent.” “Great!” I said relieved. “Unless I get indicted,” he said, “then I would go to jail.” I gulped my wine down, asked for the check, and sprinted in the rain as fast as I could to the nearest subway station.

So now my friend wants to set me up on a blind date and I want to make extra sure that I have all the dirt on this dude before proceeding. Never again will I suffer a repeat of the Tom scenario. So, following Wendy’s sage advice, I Googled this guy’s name AND email address.

Google has come out with a new coming out feature! If you type “gay,” “lesbian” or “homosexual” into the search engine, a rainbow banner will appear above your search results in celebration of Pride Month. So, forget looking up at the sky on these rainy days, just get gay with Google. Warning: lezzy, ‘mo, lug, and hot tranny mess won’t yield the same result. You’ve gotta keep it classy to get this graphic everyone can take pride in. [WOW]

Google is trying to make magic happen twice with the launch of the mytouchG3, their follow up to the insanely popular G1 mobile phone. Hundreds of personalized applications and seamless integration with the user’s Google mail accounts made the phone an instant hit. Google has expanded on these features with fresh apps like Google Search by Voice, enhanced photo and video recording as well as instant one click uploads to YouTube and Picasa Web. The mytouchG3, which comes in black, white and merlot (fancy!), is available for pre-order July 8th and for national sale in early August. Assuming you sign up for a two year contract, it will only set you back about $200. The tech geek in me—that refuses to buy an iPhone!—is singing with glee.

Marie Claire‘s Diana Vilibert has something crazy to admit: “Give me his name and 30 minutes, and I’ll give you his life story as told through Google, from the name of his childhood pet to a comprehensive collage of ex-girlfriends. I’m all for exhaustively Googling dates and digging up what’s out there.” And she’s not alone. Nearly every one of my female friends has Googled a potential date. Some have taken it to the extreme (background info on past GF’s maybe?), while most stick to the basics. What’s his favorite music? How funny is he? Most of what we want to find out about someone can be dug up on Facebook, but for the pesky dudes who makes their profiles private, Google offers a backup plan. Of course, you may end up finding out more than you bargained for. To be honest, I worry about potential dates Googling me. What I reveal on this site alone could scare off men. But do guys Google-stalk women before dates? Find out after the jump.

Contrary to what we’ve heard from the guys on our IM, Google searches seem to indicate that men prefer women to have a wild, out of control bush over waxed or shaved pubic styles. According to YesButNoButYes, a bikini shop owner did some investigating of Google search trends and discovered that more people search the term “hairy p*ssy” than they do “bald p*ssy,” “shaved p*ssy,” “brazilian wax,” or “bikini wax.” These are hardly scientific results; after all, who knows if these Googlers were searching for these terms based on pubic hair preference. And besides that, the other results added up about equal the total for “hairy p*ssy” searches. Also, don’t people search for things they’re generally really, like, interested in? Maybe those who really, really like untamed pubes are more devoted to their fetish than the majority who prefer but don’t obsess about a little below-the-belt grooming.

According to a new poll, women are way more likely than men to “stalk” an ex online, with 62% of the 1700 people polled admitting to looking up a former love online. I totally believe that women use the Internet more often than men to garner information on a crush, look up the whereabouts of exes, and check out a former flame’s new significant other. In fact, Catherine and I were just discussing the fact that none of our recent dates seemed to have Googled us, which I kind of find…insulting. But I don’t think “looking up” an ex (or a crush or the competition) online is the same as “stalking.” After the jump, I break down the differences between just snoopin’ and totally stalking when it comes to online behavior.

Several years ago, fresh out of a long-term, live-in relationship, I started seeing a guy I met in a bar who was also on the rebound. I was searching for the antithesis of my ex, and as a well-traveled, charming, cocky med student, he fit the bill perfectly. He, on the other hand, seemed to be searching for someone exactly like his ex, a fellow med student who, I learned, loved strappy heels, expensive boutiques, and spoke with a Russian accent. Much to my rebound’s chagrin, I was nothing like his ex, despite his constant effort to mold me into something resembling her. “You’re totally still in love with her,” I accused him one afternoon for the umpteenth time after he recommended yet another store where she liked to shop. “You’re crazy!” he exclaimed again, something, in my vulnerable state, I was beginning to believe.

Google recently released its “2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist” lists of the fastest rising search terms, which are the terms that have seen the biggest increase in searches from last year. In the U.S., the top 10 fastest rising terms are:

1. obama
2. facebook
3. att
4. iphone
5. youtube
6. fox news
7. palin
8. beijing 2008
9. david cook
10. surf the channel

Kind of says a lot about our country, doesn’t it? At least American Idol David Cook is #9, not #1. Just for fun, we took a look at what people were searching for that brought them to The Frisky. Check them out, after the jump…

We here at The Frisky live for celeb gossip, chocolate, and your comments. What can we say, you bitches crack us up! So in honor of you, our smart, sexy, and incisive readers, who aren’t afraid to talk smack on the Internet, here are our five favorite comments from last week, after the jump. Oh, and between TODAY and next Thursday, if your comment is chosen as one of the best for “Commenter’s Ball,” you’ll win a sweet eco-friendly t-shirt from Quiksilver!

Hey, see that ad to the left? Kind of sad huh? I woke up on my 29th birthday (last Sunday), checked my Facebook profile for birthday well-wishers and saw that ad glaring back at me! It’s been there, non-stop practically, all week, a not-so-subtle reminder that two months prior to my 29th birthday, my fiance broke up with me and I became, yes, ALONE AGAIN. If the accuracy of this particular targeted ad wasn’t so freakishly detailed (how on earth did the tech bots know “a man suddenly pulled away”???) to the point of hilarity, it might actually make me depressed. After the jump, more targeted ad bull crap, on Facebook and Google.

We’ve all been there, we’ve had a bit too much to drink — more than some of us would care to admit — and suddenly, calling, texting, or emailing an old flame seems like the best. Idea. Ever!! You know it never goes well and the humiliation the next morning is worse than the raging hangover. It’s not just old flames we drunkenly reach out to, either — there are also estranged friends and family members, old (or, worse, current) bosses and co-workers, and random cuties online. Back when Friendster was the social networking site du jour and I was nursing a broken heart and wounded ego, I spent more than one wine-soaked evening exchanging messages with attractive, 28-38 year-old men in my area, messages I hope stay as buried as that broken relationship I was trying to get over. 

On occasions like those, it would have been nice to have someone — anyone! — stop me and say, “Wendy, do you really want to send that message? Are you sure it’s not just the booze talking?” I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t have pushed “send” just the same, but still, maybe a voice of reason would have saved me from one or two of my more embarrassing drunken messaging mishaps. If Gmail has anything to say about it, all of us are about to have that much-needed voice of reason in our lives…well, on the weekends, anyway (and provided you don’t suck at math).

It used to be you had to wait until you had ringing ears to know someone was thinking about you, but these days you can get an email alert any time someone Googles your name. Ziggs.com, a new social networking site, invites people to create profiles and promises to give them a top position in all search engines for $4.95 a month. Members get instant email notifications every time a visitor views their profiles via search engines like Google, even alerting them of the visitor’s location. This sort of thing just smacks of all kinds of wack, from encouraging rampant narcissism, to creating the modern day “waiting for his call” syndrome, as well as making people wonder about their exes way more than necessary. 

“I Google all my dates! But I don’t believe everything I read though. I Google pictures to see ex-girlfriends and stuff.”—Lauren Conrad [via Pop Sugar]

“For some reason, Tommy has me Google Alerted.”—Pamela Anderson on her on-again-off-again ex, Tommy Lee