Although the media and many within the industry seem to be on their way to ending their love affair with Google, the search engine still remains the most popular engine on the Web. That said, you've got to wonder if their forray into everything from email to mapping to blogging might be starting to push the limit of what users will find acceptable and what they'll find to be just...well...creepy.

Microsoft became known as the computer equivalent of the evil empire when they started using their clout and bank account to take over pretty much every tech idea that was every suggested. Google seems to be on their way to doing the same thing. While I would have once called you crazy if you told me Google would launch a browser or an online payment system, speculation about those offerings now seems perfectly normal.

The question becomes how far can they go while still maintaining their status as darling of the online world... They've already alienated traditional publishers with their book scanning plans and privacy advocates had a field day criticizing the Gmail system.

Jason Dowdell has a great blog post today that discusses the issue. He makes some good points and links to some other interesting discussions going on around the web.