It has been funny to watch Google squirm as the world calls it out for aggressively pursuing its own self-interest in the “net neutrality” clash.

It’s funny because Google’s attitude is so different from the last massive tech empire to aggressively pursue its own self-interest–Microsoft.

How so?

Microsoft was always straightforward about doing everything it could to gouge its competitors’ eyes out.  Google, meanwhile, is devoting enormous energy to demonstrating that, despite appearances to the contrary, it actually has everyone else’s best interests in mind.

For an illustration of the difference, consider that famous (and possibly apocryphal) remark Bill Gates supposedly made in a meeting with Netscape in the mid-1990s, something along the lines of “We can buy you or we can kill you.”  (Microsoft chose the latter route.)  Consider the chair Steve Ballmer threw in his legendary tantrum about Google.  Consider Microsoft’s “link and lever” strategy to leverage its Windows monopoly and achieve world domination.

It wasn’t until Microsoft was dragged into court, found to have violated anti-trust laws, and slapped with huge penalties that it began to change the way it presented itself to the world (as a kinder, gentler awesomely powerful and profitable monopoly).

Google, meanwhile, has become almost as powerful as Microsoft was in its heydey, but it has done it while trying to adhere to its pre-IPO mantra “Don’t be evil”–a mantra that would preclude a wildly dominant company from trying to gouge its competitors’ eyes out.

Thus, we hear stories of founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page shouting at each other about whether Google should use cookies and track its users the way everyone else does (it now does).  Thus we have the company’s angst-ridden flip-flopping on China.  Thus we get last week’s attempt to say that the outrage about Google’s new stance on “net neutrality”–that the fixed-line Internet should be open but the wireless should have a fast lane (for Google, presumably) and a slow lane–was in keeping with Google’s commitment to putting the community’s interests first.

In short, the difference between Microsoft’s approach to being an evil empire and Google’s approach to it is that Google wants to rule the world and be liked.

Microsoft, meanwhile, didn’t give a damn how much everyone hated it. As far as Microsoft was concerned, its competitors could bitch in co-miserating poverty while Microsoft laughed all the way to the bank.

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