Google - brand turning point?

Is Google Evil?
67% of FT.com readers inspired or insensed enough to respond to the readers poll felt that "Google is being evil". Not a necessary evil. Just plain evil.
This is an extraordinary depth of feeling for a brand recently voted by readers of BRANDCHANNEL as the #1 top global brand in terms of impact (www.brandchannel.com 23 January 2006).

Comments on the FT.Com Forum website explained why some people felt like this - they commented that "the internet is about freedom", and Google had "sold its soul", perhaps in the IPO. Clearly some of attributes and values that people had associated with the Google brand - freedom, openness, access - had seemed violated by the acceptance of Chinese censorship. People who had been fans or advocates of Google because of these values, and prefered to use Google because of them, now felt let down. They felt deceived. And those who had been advocates of Google in their private lives perhaps felt humiliated.

This is not likely to be the end of Google. It is not the turning point which is the beginning of the end. But is is probably the point of inflexion which is the end of the beginning.

Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, in his podcast from the World Economic Forum in DAVOS talks about setting up Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google. So Google is setting out its Corporate Social Responsibility platform, re-stating some of the ethical values that made it attractive in the first place. Perhaps replacing the ethical values of freedom with the ethical value of philanthropy. But this will not yet be distributing as much as Bill Gates Foundations, and those bilions have not put Microsoft in top place amongst "ethical" brands, despite donating more that many governments to importnat developmental and humanitarian causes.

The long-term damage to Google is probably not to its perceived goodness, but to the the sense of trust. If individuals in the internet community have a lowered sense of trust in Google, then the honeymoon is over. Their relationship with the Google brand will not be over, but will be less special. Google will have to to work out what its new brand values will be, and work extra hard to deliver them.