Do you think that google and other main search engines know who searched for "Byzantine" before the bitcoin genesis block?
Would the creator of bitcoin search for: "Byzantine" without using Tor browser and/or VPN?
The Byzantine Generals problem is very old. I assume that there have been millions of searches for the term before 2009.
You are correct, actually. If you check on google trends, the term “Byzantine Generals” has been searched multiple times even before 2009. In fact it peaked between November of 2004 and February of 2005. This term is used in blockchain technology but it is simply an analogy so we can expect that even people without the knowledge of crypto or blockchain technology has heard about this.
Now if Satoshi were to have searched this, it would be impossible to identify if it was him if he wasn’t logged in. Besides I don’t think he’d be so careless with his privacy.