Jeff Beard has a good article about issues related to judicial use of search engines. The Cnet article which Beard cites has several examples of how Google has appeared in many cases where judges have done outside research on issues and citations of Google in opinions and the courtroom.

This is just one area where the increasing use of search engines will intersect with the law. When I was going through the interview process for my current job someone from my new employer did a google search on my name and visited this site. Similarly when I was on the other side of the table interviewing a candidate recently they had conducted a similar search and also arrived at this site. What many non-system administrator types may not know is that when they do this I get a record of the exact terms they used to search for the information. It does not take a great deal of imagination to reach a hypothetical situation where someone does a search on my name and combines it with a term I deem to be discriminatory leading to my deciding the reason I didn't get a job had to do with some such search.

The other side of this situation is that it is becoming a powerful tool to land a job to understand your audience well. The search engines and internet have made this much easier. While it still seems to be a minority of people are using the tool to its full potential, those who do will be rewarded.