The wrath of Google.

Is Google the new Microsoft? I just Googled that phrase, having remembered an article with that name from a few days ago. Such is the case with the ubiquitous Google; it's so engrained in our lives that where else would I go to find information critical of Google?

But when CNET's Eleanor Mills did a not-so-critical and innocuously titled story, "Google balances privacy, reach," Google's CEO wasn't so pleased. Mills spent a half hour seeing what the search engine would churn up on CEO Eric Schmidt and then published it in a balanced piece on the technolgy news site. Nothing earthshattering: Schmidt's loaded, lives in a posh community, gets off on Burning Man and amateur flying. But in response to the article, Schmidt--the guy whose very loadedness comes from putting this type of personal information about you and me out there for the world to see--had a cow. Reacting "in a way better suited to a 16th-century monarchy than a 21st-century democracy with an independent press," Schmidt had his PR director put in a complaint to CNET and banned them from any interviews for a year. So maybe Google is becoming as weird and secretive and dominant as Microsoft...