Chicken and egg.

His identity was only relevant because NYT was going to reveal it, so he had to quit his job and temporarily shut down his blog.

Typing in his first and middle name suggested his last name. However, the search he was concerned about was his first and last name leading to his first and middle. That was not in auto suggest.

Put another way, online readers knowing his IRL name, fine. But people he worked with IRL, he preferred not to point to the online persona.

I am saddened to see how much effort you went to in order to copy / paste this example everywhere in this thread. It isn’t relevant and has no connection to Scott’s efforts to stay anonymous nor the NYT’s malicious behavior by not respecting his request.

You’ve pasted this everywhere for nothing. It doesn’t contribute to the discussion or count as evidence for anything. It’s just a completely disconnected and irrelevant piece of trivia that you are trying to astroturf onto the discussion as though it had any credible reason to be considered relevant (it does not).