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Google Does Good

If the U.S. government intends to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google, it had better act fast. Given the pace and profile of Google's philanthropic activities, the Justice Department may have to amend whatever legal documents have been prepared so far by changing the defendant's name to "Saint Google."

Google's latest act of righteousness is the launch of All for Good, a new online platform for finding and sharing information about local opportunities to volunteer.

All for Good offers a search interface that organizes data from other charitable organizations and an API for creating applications that make use of that data.

"Just as releasing the Maps API led to an surge of independent and creative uses of geographic information, we've built All for Good as a platform to encourage innovation in volunteerism, as much as an end product in itself," said Google engineers Paul Rademacher and Adam Sah in a blog post on Monday. "We hope software developers will use the API or code to build their own volunteering applications, some even better than the All for Good site!"

At present, the apps that support volunteerism in conjunction with site listings are limited. They include the All for Good gadget for iGoogle or personal Web pages and the Catalista app for Android mobile phones, both of which do little more than connect would-be volunteers with nearby opportunities to lend a hand. But more interesting uses of All for Good data may emerge after developers have had a chance to mull the possibilities.

Other Google do-gooding includes various Google.org initiatives designed to save energy and the environment, the company's mission to increase online access to information, its free services, its contributions of open source code, its occasional willingness to fight government information demands, and its ongoing effort to protect users from malware.

Given all that, does it really matter if Google maintains a search ad monopoly, wins an orphaned book monopoly, contributes to the demise of privacy and traditional media business models, compromises its principles to do business in China, and doesn't allow users to delete search data stored on its servers?

Well, it depends who you ask.

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