August 24, 2005
Must-Read: Google as Villain
Google has become the cultural arbiter, the information aggregator and possibly the communications leader of our era, and it’s therefore no surprise that Google has emerged as top contender for the most powerful company you love to hate. On the heels of yesterday’s news that Google has entered the IM and voice communications business, the New York Times’ Gary Rivlin has a piece entitled “Relax, Bill Gates; It’s Google’s Turn as the Villain.”
Google is apparently blamed for everything from hogging engineering talent to making it difficult for little guys to find venture capital. But to me the real sign of Google’s new-found power was its undenied effort to blackball online news service CNET after one of its reporters published personal information about CEO Eric Schmidt (which the reporter obtained by Googling Schmidt.)
Google said it won’t talk to CNET until 2006 as punishment for the article. This tactic is so reminiscent of Microsoft’s press relations in the late 1990s. And did anyone else out there have to deal with the unbelievably dismissive and arrogant press folks at Excite@Home when that company was at its zenith? Microsoft, although still a titan with few peers, is a much kinder, gentler company to deal with these days after taking a few hard knocks from investors, the federal government and the press.
Excite@Home, of course, went out in an ignoble blaze when its cable partners pulled the plug. (Excite@Home actually believed its was more powerful than its cable backers).
I’m not saying Google is headed for a fall, but when a company starts threatening the press, or even turning its back on the press as punishment for unflattering articles, that tactic seems to presage a fall from grace of some kind. Stay tuned for more anti-Google articles.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at August 24, 2005 08:53 AM
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