I believe what seperates the two is the intensity and reason behind it. It would be like walking down a really nice neighborhood street and seeing in a few open doors and windows as you walk by. The people have their house open and are aware that anyone walking or driving by can see inside the house. The houses are beautiful and you like going for your walk in that neighborhood and sometimes seeing something nice. You are not 'stalking' anyone. You are not trying to invade anyone's privacy or fulfill some inappropriate internal need. NOW..... If you walked up to 4 of the houses and started looking IN their windows, you are WAY over a line and have crossed into stalking. You are now invading someones privacy in a manner that they would not expect. You are now fulfilling some inappropriate need within yourself and are crossing boundaries.
That would be the best way I could describe it myself. I guess the big point is two-fold. What is going on inside of you when you google someone AND are you ONLY going and looking at things that the person would know is public viewing or are you desperately trying to find 'hidden' information.

I do like what the one poster said about the T having boundaries. I agree 110% and I would NEVER EVER EVER want to cross my T's boundaries even if his boundaries were less then what I would think they were. I want to stay FAR away from that possibility. That act in and of itself might send me over the edge. I guess that is why I didn't see it as a big problem. I find it ok in my job for people to be googling me to find out about me and expect them to and my intentions were not to cross any hidden lines with my T.
*now I did miss the part in the original post about going as far as to look up tax records. That might be taking a google/facebook search a bit far. Think motives and what is going on internally.