I've been talking about a Google backlash since last February.
Judging by recent comments posted on this site, that backlash is now acute.
The press concurs. Fortune magazine ran an article today entitled “Can Google Grow Up?” which airs some strong criticisms of the company:
“Google has grown arrogant, making some of its executives as frustrating to deal with in negotiations as AOL's cowboy salesmen during the bubble. It has grown so fast that employees and business partners are often confused about who does what. A rise of stock- and option-stoked greed is creating rifts within the company. Employees carp that Google is morphing in strange and nerve-racking ways. And talk swirls over the question of who's really in charge: CEO Schmidt or co-founders Brin and Page?”
An article in today’s Boston Globe, meanwhile, opens with the question: Do you hate Google yet?
“Less than a decade ago, you could have said the same of Microsoft Corp. It was once viewed as an heroic American institution, an upstart software company founded by a Harvard dropout who became a billionaire by outsmarting IBM Corp., the world's biggest computer firm. These days, even most loyal Microsoft users don't much like the company, perceiving it as an arrogant producer of slovenly software.
Is it Google's turn?”
Personally, I don’t think so. Google still has a long way to go on the upcurve before the public really gets a taste for blood. All of which reminds me of a great essay by the Toby Young (author of How To Lose Friends and Alienate People) in The Spectator, about a year ago: Why Our Gods Must Die:
“Clark Gable once remarked to David Niven that, when it came to the contract between a star and his public, the public had read the small print and the star hadn’t. All it took was one tiny violation and the adoring crowds turned into a baying mob. ‘Contained within fan worship is the potential for hatred and disdain,’ says David Gritten, the author of a recently published book called Fame. ‘It’s binary. The switch can be flipped at any time.’”
And Google's founders, after all, are now celebrities. So let’s do what we do to all celebs: build 'em up, then knock 'em down...
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