Google's departure from the Chinese mainland appears to have been a business retreat dressed up as an ideological offensive, in which a specious argument about free speech was used as a fig leaf to cover the company's failure to penetrate and dominate a market of its choosing. But it also reflects outdated, Cold War style thinking.

Anyway, Google.cn is gone, and while local employees and loyal users may feel lost in the lurch, it is worth considering the upside to Google's departure from the world's biggest Internet market.

Google has grown so big so fast and has enriched itself to such an absurd degree that it is in danger of losing the trust of its customers. Like a bloated corporate monster careening out of control, it smashes down walls of privacy and discretion while sucking up personal data like a celestial vacuum cleaner. Scanning other people's mail is bad enough, but it also uses that and other personal data to reap billions in advertising dollars.

It can be seen as a large, if not the largest, intelligence operation of its kind, sifting through data in real time at a rate that traditional spy agencies could only envy.

Like a shark that doesn't know how to stop swimming, it is a nonstop eating machine, buying up competitors and kindred companies, all for what purpose? Free speech? Democratic expression? Personal freedom? That's what CEO Eric Schmidt recently told the Google Personal Democracy Forum, but speaking to advertisers, he probably came closer to the truth, saying: "We love advertising!"

Questioned about the ethics of information hoarding at a recent forum in Abu Dhabi, Schmidt snapped back: "Is there a government you would prefer to be in charge of this?"

Governments run the gamut of good and bad, but their existence is predicated on social compact to be stewards of the common good, pledged to serve and protect the people.

What can be said about a private company that scans personal information on an unprecedented level for no greater good than stockholder profit?

Simply put, we cannot believe that Google is incapable of doing wrong. Indeed its claim to do no evil has a Shakespearian air of protesting too loudly.

Even with sterling intentions and the strictest of standards, it stands to reason that this dollar-driven global information giant may turn out to be, without fully realizing it, something less than good.