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[Editor's note: This blog post has been given a shamelessly incendiary title in a heavy-handed attempt to provoke a little discussion.]

As Google becomes the most well known and most used digital technology brand in the world, their company motto – and probably the closest thing they’ve got to a brand positioning statement – “Don’t be evil” is no longer specific enough to give people a sense of what Google’s brand means in their life.

Among all the hoopla about the big advertising event last night (I think there might have been some kind of sports thing going on too…?), was the news that the most popular website on the internet, Google, decided to spend $5-6 million on a TV ad promoting their already hugely dominant web search service. As much as anyone may have enjoyed the spot itself, I think that a lot of people had the same question that me and the people I was watching it with had: Why does Google need to waste any money on a TV ad during the Super Bowl?

I continue to believe that Google is quickly going to replace Microsoft as the most popular personal computing operating system; they’re ...