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“You can make money without doing evil.” – Google’s Corporate Philosophy

As Google turns 12, it faces mounting scrutiny of and resistance to a variety of its services and policy positions, which Google’s public relations team has systematically addressed. This resistance comes in many forms: lawsuits from various individuals and governments over its expanding Street View service (the latest being Spain) and the privacy implications it has, outcry over its stance on net neutrality, fights with publishers and book stores over Google Books’ alleged copyright infringement and Google’s forthcoming e-book service (Google Editions), concerns over what Google’s cookies tell it about its users and how long that information is saved, websites that proclaim Google is evil, and accusations of cover-ups of its massive energy usage.

So, how is Google’s public relations team coping with the backlash? Many companies experience similar growing pains as they age, however, few (if any) other companies promote themselves as the “do no evil” guys quite as much as Google does. Usually, Google copes with the backlash by launching company initiatives that overshadow the negative publicity. Since Google is still largely a media darling with a bevy of publications waiting to announce the latest news, the positive initiatives backed by Google’s public relations department generate far more publicity than the negative ones.

Case in point: In the past several years, Google has announced many environmental initiatives. The vast majority of those initiatives revolve around Google reducing or offsetting the energy usage of Google’s datacenters with alternate energy purchases, using recycled water or sea water for cooling, etc. Google’s public relations initiatives received broad coverage and overshadowed a Harper’s Magazine article that brought to light the tremendous amounts of energy datacenters (be they Google’s, Microsoft’s, Yahoo!’s or others) require. To be fair, since that time, Google has gone to great lengths to show how much more efficient its datacenters are compared to the average competitor. So, the company is making strides to reduce consumption – reducing the strain on the environment and improving its own bottom line.

In other areas, Google’s public relations team simply puts in a feature for its new services designed to placate the opposition. In this case, Google Editions provides a good example. Reportedly, Google will get a cut of all the e-books it sells, but also give users the option to purchase the e-books from their local bookstore’s website. While it’s hard to fathom users who want the convenience of an e-book adding another step or two to their purchase process to buy from another website, this option seems designed to pacify bookstores in some small way.

Google’s public relations strategy seems to be paying off so far. Most people still have a very positive impression of the company. In fact, Google ranked 2nd of 346 on Fortune’s 2010 list of the World’s Most Admired Companies. However, the chorus of dissenting voices continues to mount. . .