Adam Green’s posting about Google Base on his blog looks a little bit paranoid but I’m intrigued by the fears it exposes. I seem to remember that it wasn’t that long ago that Google was the scrappy new competitor that was going to keep Microsoft honest. Now, in the minds of many people, Google has become the insatiable oligarch that aims to dominate the Internet and usurp their personal freedom.

Robert X. Cringeley’s column on PBS.org puts forth this same Google uber alles vision with regard to Google’s investments in dark fibre, server farms and web hosting. It’s a dark vision of one company controlling the Internet by monopolizing the way people search for information and, ultimately, the information itself.

It seems you can’t win the battle for public opinion in this industry. The greatest sins of Google, Microsoft, Oracle, the IBM of old or any other black-hat competitor is simply that they executed better than anyone else, captured the lead position and drove their advantage to increase their domination. There is no shame in that. On the contrary, the stock markets demand nothing less. The idea that these companies are compelled by some nefarious goal to dominate markets and rob users of choice is ludicrous. They’re too busy trying to meet their investors’ inflated goals for the next quarter to dream of world conquest.

It is amazing, though, how quickly a company can go from hero to villain in this overclocked industry. Success sort of automatically makes you public enemy #1. Google embodies many of the principles we admire in modern corporations: speed, innovation, decisiveness, flexibility. Why do these qualities make it such an object of ridicule?