HOW GOOGLE EVOLVED FROM ‘CUDDLY' STARTUP TO ANTITRUST TARGET

In Google’s infancy, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin reviled Microsoft as a technological bully that ruthlessly abused its dominance of the personal computer software market to choke off competition that could spawn better products.

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Their disdain for Microsoft spurred Google to adopt “Don’t Be Evil” as a corporate motto that remained its moral compass during its transition from a free-wheeling startup to a publicly traded company suddenly accountable to shareholders.

That pledge is now a distant memory as Google confronts an existential threat similar to what Microsoft once faced.

Like Microsoft was 22 years ago, Google is in the crosshairs of a Justice Department lawsuit accusing it of wielding the immense power of its internet search engine as a weapon that has bludgeoned competition and thwarted innovation to the detriment of the billions of people using a stable of market-leading services that includes Gmail, Chrome browser, Android-powered smartphones, YouTube videos and digital maps.

“They are definitely not a cuddly company any longer,” said Maelle Gavet, author of the book, “Trampled By Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How To Fix It.”

How Google grew from its idealistic roots into the cutthroat behemoth depicted by antitrust regulators is a story shaped by unbridled ambition, savvy decision-making, technology’s networking effects, lax regulatory oversight and the unrelenting pressure all publicly held companies face to perpetually pump up their profits.

Google behaved “like a teenager for a very long time, but now they are all grown up. They became a corporation,” said Ken Auletta, author of “Googled: The End of The World as We Know It.”