"From the start, however, Google has marketed itself on niceness. It trumpets an unofficial motto, "Don't be evil," publishes a detailed code of ethics for its employees, and adds playful modifications to its home page on holidays. Smart business for a company built in large part on consumer trust, but heartwarming nonetheless."

"Lately, though, Google has been acting less like a collective of lovable geeks and more like a big, powerful corporation. Not surprising—it is a big, powerful corporation, one with a responsibility to its shareholders to grow ever bigger and more powerful. But it's still somewhat jarring."

"Many of the stories one reads about Google these days involve lawyers and lawsuits. Again, par for the corporate course, and again, not lovable—especially given the way Google seems to use legal combat as an extension of business strategy. As Jeffrey Toobin noted in a recent article in the New Yorker, for example, Google's wealth may allow it to settle a suit filed by copyright holders over digitizing books; paying off the litigants, Toobin wrote, may "create a huge barrier for any new entrants in this field." Not so nice."

"Google is also locked in a legal battle with Viacom. In March, Viacom sued the search giant for $1 billion over the constant appearance of its copyrighted material on YouTube, the popular video service Google purchased last year. Google says under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act it has no obligation to seek out such violations without specific complaints, and that may be true. But Google comes across less as a company that wants to gives us all a chuckle over the latest South Park episode, and more like a hungry advertising machine that will walk up to the limit of the law to make a buck. (One bizarre sideshow to this conflict: Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and founder of Google competitor IceRocket, reacted to YouTube's policy of not screening for copyrighted material by urging readers of his
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