Recently, there has been a lot of talk about how Google is no longer the company it used to be – for example this ridiculous article by Danny Sullivan on paid inclusion last month.*
From its search page design to the nature of Google+ to what it’s ‘Don’t be evil’ slogan means today, it’s coming under the kind of flack that massive brands eventually always do.
But at the same time, I think it’s a company that has navigated a lot of these challenges with impressive grace. Quite apart from burying (or everything but?) it’s head in the sand like Apple, it seems to confront these threats with a powerful cultural tool: transparency.