Who the heck is Chad Kroski?

We were doing some serious head-scratching when we saw the name Chad Kroski rise from obscurity to the likes of Pat Robertson on Technorati's top-ten search list this morning. A Google search turned up almost 90,000 mostly German language results, which only fueled our curiosity about this Kroski character. Thankfully, Wikipedia set us straight by explaining that Mr. Kroski is nothing but a fictitious character popularized by a German T-Mobile TV commercial and some creative bloggers.

Although urban mythology has described Kroski as everything from a communist best-selling author to the founder of private health insurance, his true claim to fame was a commericial launched July 1 for T-Mobile's "Web 'n' walk" service. The spot features a girl trying to get to know a guy in a bar. She spots a book by Chad Kroski in his bag and retreats to the bathroom to Google the author through her mobile phone.

That's all it took to set off a Web frenzy, including the creation of Chad Kroski sites, debates over his contributions to the world and, in turn, his own Wikipedia entry which begins, "First and foremost, it should be noted that Chad Kroski does not exist."

The latest buzz, according to bloggers, is that T-Mobile--a division of Deutche Telekom--plans to take over some of the spoof domain names, like www.chadkroski.de and www.chadkroski.com, which was unavailable this afternoon.

Blog community response:

"Chad, oh Chad...Do you think this life is worth it, being a bestseller author without any books on Amazon?"
--Telegon Sichelputzer

"Chad Kroski is meant to die since the fictional author created his own existence through various Web logs and Web sites. This poor attempt to restore law and order by showing (corporate) muscles will not help the subsidiary T-Mobile to push their seemingly useless products off on the independent citizen-media."
--Words are Weapons of Mass Destruction

"Now, Chad Kroski, aka Charaijev Alexander Kroski, the man who never existed, is starting to live a life of his own on the Internet."
--Google Blogoscoped

"Chad Kroski was not a real best-seller author, but indeed a writer...Wherever Chad Kroski currently lives, he's probably around 88 years old and not necessarily involved in the German marketing scene. But...if he exists--why not file a lawsuit against the Telekom marketing branch to get some money for the future, Chad?"
--Words are Weapons of Mass Destruction