Is Google the New Evil Empire?

Long-time Silicon Valley writer Mike Malone strikes a rather strident, conspiratorial chord in his latest column about Google's new Chrome browser.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5727509&page=1

Malone sees the timing of the announcement between the Democrat and Republican conventions -- normally anathema to PR announcements because of the noise volume -- to be suspicious from such a media-savvy company. And he paints Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who once-upon-a-time was Sun's chief scientist as well as CEO of Novell, as somehow obsessed with revenge for the trouncing that Sun received at the hands of Microsoft.

No doubt, Google is at the intersection of many information transactions on the net, and that Chrome helps it touch even more information transactions. But is it evil genius? Is it possible to "do no harm?"