Back when it was just a small startup run by a couple of guys named Larry and Sergey -- before they hired veteran technology executive Eric Schmidt as CEO, and before the company went public and became a $150-billion colossus -- everyone was rooting for Google, the little search engine that could.
With its clean and simple interface and a head office filled with motorized scooters and impromptu Frisbee games, Google was a refreshing change from giants such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon.
A couple of important things have happened since then, however. One is that Google has become a gigantic market presence, with what some industry watchers estimate is a 70-per-cent share of the online search business.
In other words, it isn't a plucky little startup any more.
As it has grown, Google has also begun to reach beyond the search business and into new markets -- including the newspaper, radio and television advertising business -- and thus its sphere of influence has increased exponentially.
Those two things have helped to change the way Google is perceived. Instead of being the scrappy underdog, it has now become the leader, and things that might have received little notice if the company had done them in its early days are attracting unfavourable attention.
Google has come under fire over the past week or so for promoting its own services -- including its photo software (Picasa) and its blog-writing software (Blogger) -- at the top of its search-result pages.
While some see this as a natural place for Google to offer links to its own products, some critics feel that doing so crosses a line, in that it moves Google away from what they see as its primary business of providing unbiased search results.
One of Google's main critics, Blake Ross -- a programmer who helped develop the Firefox browser -- said on his blog last week that if the company truly believed in the value of products like Picasa, it would rely on its own search algorithms to promote them.
Since Google's search engine is supposed to elevate the most popular links to the top of the heap, he argues, then Picasa and Blogger should eventually wind up there.
Some critics have even gone so far as to compare Google to Microsoft, which engaged in so much questionable behaviour in trying to promote its own products that it became the subject of a U.S. federal antitrust investigation.
Could Google's behaviour eventually be seen in a similar light? It's possible -- although it's worth noting that changing operating systems is a lot harder than switching to a different search engine.
As Mr. Ross noted in his post, Google's real Achilles heel is its own motto: "Don't Be Evil."
Yahoo and other search companies such as Ask.com also include promotional links to their own products, but they've never made such a promise -- and in any case, neither of those companies has the kind of market share that is likely to attract attention to their behaviour. Google does.
For Google, the combination of market power and an overly ambitious corporate motto is a one-two punch when it comes to encouraging criticism. How the company chooses to deal with that criticism could determine whether it remains the popular choice or runs into Microsoft-style opposition.
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