It's Easter, Google Celebrates Chavez

Google is renown for it's Doodles - graphics on their home page to donate a special day.  At first they were fairly rare, but now are becoming more and more commonplace.

When I awoke on a foggy Easter Sunday yesterday, I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised to see this:

On the most holy, sacred, and meaningful day in all Christianity, Google chose to celebrate the birthday of Cesar Chavez.  

Is this pandering to a minority with which Google is politically aligned?  Absolutely.  Is this trolling for Christian reaction and outrage?  Again, absolutely.

I'm a Google fan-boy.  I use a wide suite of their tools, to the point of exclusivity, in both my personal and professional life.  Just an example as it pertains to YellowDogPatrol.com: this blog is written on their Blogger platform, I track performance via Google Analytics, I receive notifications of blog comments via my email account on Gmail, I receive gobs of traffic via their search engine, I earn income via advertising served up by AdSense, etc.  I'm one of their biggest fans.

But when they purposefully seek to pick a fight, it becomes infuriating, and it makes me question my alliances.  

Oh, Google may very well change the Doodle and issue some kind of "If our actions caused offense to some," non-apology, but their actual intention is obvious.  This is a company with a market cap of over $250 billion.  The Doodle wasn't put up by some rogue intern over the weekend.  This was a very thoughtful and purposeful act. 

Welcome to 2013, where the lines between business and politics have faded to the point of no longer existing.