Thursday's New York Times' Decoder article struck a cord with me.  In the article, Sergey Brin defends Google's stance on non-search-related topics like scanning out-of-print books, Microsoft, network neutrality, and Chrome.  Google's motto is to "not be evil" but lately I have to question their methods.

Chrome is clearly something that Google is pushing hard.  Google.com is my homepage and I've frequently seen the ads pushing me to try Chrome because it is so much faster.  I use Firefox (v3.5.3) and lately I've noticed that google.com is much slower to load.  In the last few days, it seems like the page is loading differently; the logo and the search box appear immediately and the other links 'fade in' a few seconds later, like after I move my mouse.

I suppose it's possible that Google thinks they are making improvements to google.com.  Maybe it is a better design in the long run.  I'm not sure I buy that though.  Right now it is clunky and annoying.  It seems more likely to me that Google is incorporating fancy (and unnecessary) Javascript into their site and don't care if it runs slowly on Firefox.  After all, supposedly Chrome's big advantage is its Javascript performance, right?  Is this the right way for a company to push its agenda?

On this subject, I say ok.   As a website developer, Javascript performance is important to me and this may be Google's way of forcing the issue.  The point is that there clearly is an agenda here which needs to be scrutinized and shouldn't be overlooked because of their friendly motto.