I was selfishly relieved when Walmart took over the mantle from Microsoft as the company America most loves to hate.  This honor seems to accrue to companies that demonstrate incredible success year after year, and reach a size that makes their potential influence rather scary to some.

Incidentally Paul Downey lent me McLibel, a great documentary film about the events that transpired when McDonald’s occupied the "most hated" slot (though IMO much more deservedly than the others I mention!)  This dubious distinction appears to have a pretty long history!

But I’ve noticed that we’re getting pretty tired of hearing about how bad Walmart is - it distracts us from what we like to do best - shop on sale!  Now the New York Times reports on early signs that Google may be the next to take over the mantle despite their carefully managed public identity which seems to basically be "we’re not evil."

Given the opportunities for leveraging their assets to keep revenues on the up-and-up as the company matures and things start to flatten out, we should rightly be concerned that Google’s ideals fade perceptibly in the face of shareholder expectations.  And a slight change in Google can completely change the dynamics of an industry, an economy, a country, or even a religion.

Being the good guy is a hard pedestal to stay on top of when people start throwing rocks at you.  As Google grows the target gets bigger, as do the opportunities to simply stumble and fall off on your own.  It’s easy to keep your ideals when your stock options are shooting through the roof.  As Google grows it will increasingly be under pressure to become yet-another-giant-multinational with the accompanying unreasonable expectations for revenue growth.  It’s been a bit frustrating to me to watch Google get away with some things Microsoft was excoriated for.  But that disparate public treatment can turn about pretty quickly!

So when the honor comes your way, enjoy it Google!  It’s probably not possible to avoid becoming the company America most loves to hate, but by careful conduct and holding to your high ideals as closely as you can you may be able to quickly pass the trophy on to another "worthy" candidate!