Sometimes Google takes heat for doing the right thing, as it did in China. After wrestling with censorship, the company chose to shut down its Google.cn site and redirected users to the uncensored Chinese-language Google.com.hk domain in Hong Kong.
But Google has also managed to alienate regulators, both in the United States and abroad. And as the company pushes into new markets, it's found a passel of new rivals with which to do battle.
So here, then, are the top five confrontations (not scientifically selected) in which Google has managed to mire itself:
Apple: While Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt sat on the board at Apple, Google developed its Android mobile phone operating system. It may not have seemed like a conflict of interest to Schmidt for the three years he served as a director. But the Federal Trade Commission raised some questions, even after Schmidt resigned. And Apple? It's CEO, Steve Jobs, felt betrayed enough that he reportedly railed on Google at an internal meeting, saying, "We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone." Read More
