There have been a flurry of wild claims that Google is Evil lately, mostly around social search and Google's new privacy policy. A bunch of TechCrunch alums at their new site Pandodaily are particularly incensed, posting dozens of sensational posts in the past week with titles like I Guess We Have Google’s Answer: Search Results Are No Longer Sacred (a classic in the "when did you stop beating your wife" genre), Evil, Greed, And Antitrust Aren’t Google’s Real Problems, Relevancy Is (good old anecdata), and that old yellow journalist's trick SPYW Update: Is Google Back-Pedaling Ahead of Company All-Hands?. Most of these pieces take decent reporting by people like Danny Sullivan and twist it beyond recognition.
Meanwhile Apple released it's fiscal 1Q2012 numbers (covering 4Q2011), showing obscene profits, and the New York Times front-paged a huge story on the abusive conditions in the factories that generate Apple's profits, showing how Apple has been complicit in the abuse. Somehow the Apple news only merited a few mentions in Pandodaily's ticker.
Muddying the waters is a classic technique of crisis PR, usually accomplished by pitching sympathetic reporters. Setting up a whole news site for the purpose is audacious. We'll see how this works out for Apple.
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