Spock.com hopes to become the Google of people searches

A new web search service has launched, but this one doesn't provide results for the entire web—it only provides results about people. Spock.com went into public beta today after several months of private testingand prides itself in providing the "richest people search experience on the web."

"Searching for people is one of the most important applications on the web; however, the user experience is highly fragmented and unsatisfying today," claims Spock CEO Jaideep Singh. That's why the site's sole purpose is to index and gather information about individuals and offer that data when users search for general terms such as "blogger," "actor," or even specific names.

While creepy-sounding at first, Spock.com does allow users to manage their own "profiles" on the site by allowing them to import information from any number of places, such as LinkedIn, Friendster, and MySpace. Users can also add tags about themselves, upload pictures, and list contact information if they so choose. If a web site is going to try to index everything about you, you may as well beat it to the punch by including accurate information, right?

However, the general public can also add tags, pictures, and other information about you as well, possibly leaving the integrity of the personal profile in doubt. As Wikipedia has learned, some members may choose to go through and vandalize a number of profiles with false or damaging information, And if someone adds you to the site against your will... well, you're out of luck. Once you're on, you're on—especially if you aren't managing your own profile. Spock cofounder Jay Bhatti told AFP that each profile "will go through a strict process based on quality insurance [sic]" to ensure that it's not fake or incorrect, but it's unclear how site administrators plan to check every single fact posted about every single person on the site for correctness.

This naturally raises concerns from privacy advocates about personal information being organized, collected, and offered to others online without one's knowledge or consent. And with Spock claiming to have already indexed some 100 million individuals—with another million being added each day—it seems pretty likely that a large number of those people are not managing their own profiles. Spock is unlikely to be held accountable for potentially false information that users are posting about other users, however. The 1996 Communications Decency Act has repeatedly been interpreted by courts as absolving web site operators of materials being posted by third parties. But if Spock profiles begin to look like those that have shown up on gossip site dontdatehimgirl.com, then that question could be revisited once again.