Editor's Blog: Dell and Google - titans in trouble?

Dell is having to recall batteries - just over four million of them - that power some of its notebook PCs. "Under rare conditions, it is possible for these batteries to overheat, which could cause a risk of fire," the company said in an official statement that's just come in to my inbox (some time after I first heard about this hiccup).

Of course I say hiccup but to Dell - let alone all those customers right now scratching their heads and trying to peer at the underside of their laptops to check numbers - it's a bit worse than that. These things happen, as any big automaker will tell you, and companies recover, but it's probably not the best of times for such an episode to, er, flare up, whether or not we soon hear from other popular notebook-makers that might have to follow suit.

After years of what seemed like unstoppable growth, Dell has recently stalled in some areas. I fully expect the company to keep on doing what it does best - namely eating away at commodity areas through brutal supply chain efficiency and what our analyst friends would call 'execution' - but right now it's hit a pothole in the road. Must feel odd for them.

In terms of the story, hats off to the The Inquirer, a rival in some ways to silicon.com, which broke the first 'exploding laptop' story way back when. As recently as yesterday, Michael Dell was in Sydney talking about the batteries issue - "We are fully investigating that incident and a few other reported incidents… We'll keep you posted," he said - but I didn't expect this outcome.

I'll be interested on the line from Dell when I do a quarterly conference call with them on Friday first thing.

Another tech colossus that the man in the street is just as likely to know about as a tech industry insider is Google. In fact that man on the street might well talk about 'googling' a phrase or name, probably meaning to search for that phrase or name on Google, possibly on another search engine whose brand is less strong.

You probably know the Google story of the week so far. (And there is always a Google story of the week.) As our headline said yesterday, 'Google spells out its verb case scenario'. The company doesn't want you 'to google', they want you 'to run a Google search', or something like that. I'm confused.

In my mind, it's a pretty good sign that you've made a mark when people start using your brand name as a verb. Maybe even it gets included in some dictionaries for that reason. Some other companies clearly don't see it as a good thing. Just ask Hoover, Jacuzzi or Xerox. But Google? Shouldn't they be smiling, maybe even honoured?

Many have cited this as a PR own goal. Others point out the legal types over in Mountain View are thinking of the future and how the company will protect its brand. I was reading again in Wired this morning about the plan to digitise the world's leading libraries and remembered the fracas that's arisen from Google wanting to digitise - citing 'fair use' - many works of literature that are still under copyright. (Most classic works aren't because of their age.)

Does anyone else spot a divergence here, leaning one way when it concerns the works of others and another when it's your own brand, your own intellectual property?

I think it's a debate and not time to consign Google to the hero or villain category. Which is just as well, because at the silicon.com CIO Forum on 26 September, our on-stage CIO Jury debate is entitled: "Should you fear Google?"