Google: a company of contradictions

This article was published in Spiked Online 17 March 2010

Google is a company of contradictions. It claims to be open, but guards its secrets fiercely. It presents itself as a green company, but owns the world’s largest cluster of computers, using huge amounts of power to keep them cool. It is a quintessentially modern company that is run like a feudal kingdom. Although ‘don’t be evil’ is the search giant’s unofficial motto, many of its competitors see it as the devil incarnate.

Despite these incongruities – or maybe even because of them – Google is a force to be reckoned with. By far the biggest and the best player in search, it has built a huge online advertising empire that dwarfs rivals. For that reason, it was only a matter of time before regulators started sniffing around.