In recent years Google has come under growing scrutiny for a number of controversial moves. Its decision to digitize millions of books — scanning and making them part of search options — upset authors and publishers, who see the plan as a threat to intellectual property rights and as an invitation to piracy, as the books stored on servers, like online music, might be vulnerable to hackers.

Google has been criticized for complying with Chinese censorship. (In 2006 its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said, “I think it’s arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning operations and tell that country how to run itself.”) And, as Mr. Auletta observes in these pages, the company’s storage of massive amounts of data about its users raises serious privacy issues, especially when the company acknowledges that it is in the advertising business and seems eager to play matchmaker between consumers and advertisers.

Because Google “enjoys a well-deserved reputation for earning the trust of users,” Mr. Auletta says, it is “hard to imagine an issue that could imperil the trust Google has achieved as quickly as could privacy.” He adds: “One Google executive whispers, ‘Privacy is an atomic bomb. Our success is based on trust.’ ”

If users, Mr. Auletta writes, “lost trust in Google, believed their private data was being exploited and shared with advertisers (or governments), the company regularly judged one of the world’s most trusted brands would commit suicide.”

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