The past week or so we've seen a lot of negative press thrown toward our good friend, Google.  I had my say on a couple of Google-related issues.  In all honesty, the timing was purely coincidental.  I'd been working on "Google Breaks the Ten Commandments" even before others in the industry started smacking Google around.  Regardless, some took the plethora of bad press against Google as a sign that the company was in trouble.

Danny Sullivan has posted a great review of past anti-Google press coverages going back to 2001.  And as he points out in "14 'Is Google Evil?' Tipping Points Since 2001", Google survived every one of the those past events.  In fact, the company continued to grow and gain more users even as some of these events were going on.  From bad business calls to anti-Google websites and on to algorithm changes that altered search results, Google has been able to continue on despite these 14 events that caused an uproar.

I'll let you read Sullivan's article and take a stroll through Google's less than special moments.  It's really worth a read.

I think the main point to take from the article is to look at the current state of Google affairs with a clear, rational perspective.  Take off the rose-colored glasses and the black hood of despair.  Is everything hunky-dory at the Googleplex?  Probably not.  Has Google reached a tipping point?  Probably not.  But you know what?  That's business as usual for most companies.  Even the most beloved companies in the world have problems and issues.  They all have good days and they all have bad days.  That doesn't mean we can't call them out when they're having a bad day.  But we do need to keep things in perspective.

Is Google turning some users away?  Probably so.  But any company of any size is likely to do that.  Generally speaking, people are emotional creatures and it doesn't always take something big to turn them off.  What you have to remember is that the perspectives you read on and offline are not always indicative of the general public.  Often times, the most outspoken and verbal sources of information come from people who feel that they've been wronged in some way.  For every person out there crying "foul" there's probably 10 that don't care.

When the web wrote about Google's tips and their stray from the company's found philosophies, we were expressing an opinion.  If I wrote that I thought an interview on Good Morning America had "fouled" viewers by hiding advertisements inside the interview questions, would you jump to the conclusion that Good Morning America had reached the point of becoming evil?  Probably not.  Granted, Google is, and should be, looked at a little differently because they've got a published philosophy that they claim to follow.  But any other company with a similar set of guiding principles should be viewed through those principles.  It's not a Google-specific perspective, but it is different from a look at your normal, run of the mill business.  If you're going to tell people that you operate within a certain set of guidelines, you should expect to be called out when you violate those guidelines.

That being said, Sullivan's article really helps put things in perspective for those who feel that Google is spiraling into evilness.  Maybe they are.  Maybe they aren't.  They've done a few things that might be considered evil… by some.  But that's just the point.  Regardless of what Techcrunch or Blake Ross or The New York Times or the Internet Marketing Monitor or any other source of opinion says, it's just that:  an opinion.

Ultimately, each individual has to decide for themselves what constitutes an 'evil' action.  If enough of them tip the scales, we can say Google has reached a "tipping point".  Until then, all we can do is continue to say what we think, be true to our opinions, and wait to see what happens.