'One Google under Google

Resistance is futile... Looks like we haven't seen the last of the negative press cycle that began with Google's blacklisting of News.com (see "Google a Googler, pay the price"). Writing in the New York Times today, Gary Rivlin notes a backlash building against the search juggernaut. Google is going corporate, complain some technologists. It's arrogant, say others. Worse, it's hoarding talent. "Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did," LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman told the Times. "It's largely that they're hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they're working on so many different things. It's harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now." And what of Google's "do no evil" mission statement? Well, no one believes that now do they? "In the day, you'd hear that Microsoft was the evil empire, especially in Silicon Valley," said Brian Lent, the president of Medio Systems, a start-up in Seattle working on mobile-phone-based search. "Google is the new evil empire, because they're in such a powerful position in terms of control. They have potential monopolistic control over access to information. I like and respect the Google guys, but let's just say that their ultimate aim seems to me to be, 'One Google under Google, for which it stands.'