The public and press perception of the company is now heading towards the Microsoft end of the scale, rather than the Apple one. And it also marks yet another PR disaster for the firm that wasn't supposed to need any PR.

Here's the recap. Michael Moore's new film, Sicko, goes on general release this week and has been widely applauded by critics, pundits and bloggers - across party lines, interestingly enough - as a well-made and powerful document of the flaws in the American health care system and the providers of that care.

Consequently, the health care industry is taking something of a beating in the popular press, and many would argue deservedly so. Not, however, Lauren Turner of the Google Advertising team - she suggested in a recent blog post to the Google Health Advertising Blog (yes, such a thing exists) that the movie was deeply flawed, and failed to show the health industry in its best light. The answer, she suggested, was for healthcare monopolies to buy ads on Google against the keywords "Michael Moore" and "Sicko", thus promoting the healthcare industry to those searching for information on Moore's film.

Anybody with even a basic understanding of American counter-culture and blogosphere ethics will not need me to explain in the next paragraph what this led to.

Yes, you got it - outrage at Google, and a general perception that this was, perhaps, Google's advertising dominance taken a little too far. Sticking up for terrible healthcare companies, bombarding concerned citizens with advertisements and siding with big business against the little guy? This is not the stuff with which Google is associated - at least presently - in the public mindset.

Turner, of course, was forced to issue a swift retraction to the effect that the post was her view, not the official stance of Google - despite the fact she posted as a representative of Google on the company blog.

Which outlines one of the problems Google faces - communicating its position on the bigger political issues of the day accurately or, perhaps, even defining what those positions are. As the company starts to spread in to more and more areas of our life, as search becomes ubiquitous and Google's offerings and interests start to become more mainstream, the company suddenly finds itself having to have a stance on the state of the American healthcare system, unthinkable just a few years ago.

Which is precisely why it started putting some vigour into its Washington lobby efforts a few months ago. With a dozen experience politicos sitting in a DC office - more than double what most large listed Yankee companies bother with - the firm knows that it needs to work hard to represent its interests in amongst the lawmakers. When special interests and old money reign big on The Hill, Google knows it has to push extra hard to keep America pointing in the high-tech direction.

Or rather, as some would see it, to avoid America pointing in the anti-Google direction. Consumers love to see big targets take a hit, and the focus being put on political lobbying at Google is being seen by many as a cynical ploy to avoid the same kind of punishment Microsoft took for market dominance in the 90s.

Google has no intention of avoiding a monopoly on search, in the same way that Microsoft had no intention of avoiding its monopoly on operating systems. What Google wants to do is to avoid being punished in the same way that Microsoft was, and is looking to do it in the way that every other major American firm does it - with money and influence in DC.

And so we see the Google dream come to an end. The company has transformed itself from the best search engine in the world and one of the greatest storied startups in Silicon Valley history, to a search advertising monopoly using the oldest tricks in the book to avoid Washington taking too close a look at its position - especially when its position is decidedly more in keeping with its old-money aspirations than its customers and users might like.

Google rallies for corporate healthcare and for monopolies - hardly the incarnation of the oft-quoted 'Don't be Evil' that the public still has at the back of its mind. How long before public perception catches up to the reality? With more stunts like the Health Blog, it can't be too long. µ