Google, Facebook and Apple are no longer the underdogs. The online literati are now turning their critical eyes towards the new symbols of big capital.

“Once you’re big, you’re not cute anymore!”

Wise words from Markham C. Erickson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition, on why Google is getting such attention from U.S. antitrust regulators.

The current backlash against popular companies like Google, Apple and Facebook does indeed have an irrational side.

Everybody loves the underdog

As long as the companies were innovative outsiders and underdogs, independently thinking people (who are, of course, considering themselves innovative outsiders and underdogs, regardless how much power they have) will sympathize and identify with these companies.

The geeks and the nerds are the rulers of the chattering classes of the 21st century. They are the ones with the blogs and the forward looking views.

They proudly pull up their Macs, smiling smugly while waiting for the Dells of their colleagues to use their obligatory 5 minute virus checking start up time. And while the PC looks like something made of unimaginative and aesthetically challenged engineers (which, of course, they are), the Mac looks like something made by an artist (which, in a sense, it is), it becomes even clearer that the underdog gets it and the bland suits don’t.

Full disclosure: We have been the proud owners of seven Macs, five iPods and two iPhones, and our friends are dead tired of our constant nagging about how good they are. Those who have followed this blog, know our admiration for Google.

From underdogs to giants

For a while the underdogs live in denial. They repress the evidence that Apple is in many ways as brutal as Microsoft when it comes to forcing its own standards on the world.

But when the iPhone and the iPad become ubiquitous, it becomes clear that Apple is not for the connoisseur only. Apple has become the largest music retailer in the US with its iTunes store. And when the stock value of Apple exceeds Microsoft’s, it becomes equally clear that Apple is as much part of big capital as Microsoft and IBM.

In search it has become painfully evident that Microsoft is the underdog and Google the dominant player. Google owns 60 percent of the American search market. In some countries the figure is closer to 90 percent. This means that Google wields as much power as Microsoft and Windows. And, given that Google is trying to defeat Windows as well (with Google Docs and the Chrome OS) it seems clear that Google can become even more powerful than Microsoft ever was.

The Googleplex can no longer be reduced to a charming and hippie-like compound for cute nerds with lava lamps, space ships and free massages. This is why the opinion leaders of cyberspace are now suspicious of their old darling, and what once would be excused as charming and innocent quirks becomes deadly serious.

Turning on each other

A couple of mistakes are all it takes: Delivering too much personal data to business associates is one such mistake (Facebook). Censoring the iPhone app store or trying to kill off Adobe’s Flash is another (Apple).

As for Google? Well gathering personal wifi data using your Google streetview cars is like peeing on the carpet: It could have been considered cute when you were a little kitten, but now it makes the politicians and policy makers in Washington D.C. and Brussels look closer at what you are doing doing.

And they don’t love you anymore.

What more than anything else proves that the childhood of the three cats are over, is the fact that they have started attacking each other. Google and Apple, at least, used to be buddies, but since they started competing in the same market, smart phones, the old story about two creative newcomers standing shoulder to shoulder has disappeared.

Recently we saw Google engineers publicly announce that they were closing down their Facebook accounts due to privacy issues. They are working in the same company that caused an uproar when it forced all Gmail users into a new social network called Google Buzz without asking them. Google Buzz is, of course, a Facebook competitor.

See also Marketing Pilgrim: Google Takes Aim and Fires at Apple
Techradar: Google takes on Apple’s iTunes-in-the-cloud
Google Blogoscoped: Consumer Watchdog Launches Google Watch Site