I wrote something today suggesting that Dr. Eric Schmidt leave Google.

I was told, by my editor, that it was over-the-top. "A series of cheap swipes," "rather than a reasoned case."

Maybe it was. I didn't post it. I wrote something much milder, more humble, more seeking of counsel rather than snarky and smart. (I like editors. They save us from ourselves. They're very important people. Buy an editor lunch today.)

But like many people here I feel a personal kinship to Google. And I think that is the company's chief asset. Mess with my GoogleLove, and you're messing with your own GoogleSelf.

In the last few months I've seen a number of things about Google that disquieted me. Not just the obvious things, like the risk to privacy inherent in a mail program that targets ads back to you based on cookies. That's something I can take or leave. Or both - I have a Gmail account but I never use it.

No, I'm talking about Google doing things that just don't make sense from the standpoint of credibility and transparency. Dr. Schmidt's hissy-fit over News.Com googling him. Blogger's loss of market share to Movable Type. The way Google is playing footsie with the Butchers of Beijing.

Do I expect that Google will never do anything that someone will define as evil? No. That's impossible. Some people find evil in the utmost good. (I know people who think Mother Teresa was a glory-hog sentencing Bangladeshis' to a Malthusian nightmare by refusing to countenance birth control.)

But I do think questions of transparency, credibility, and the good of man are vital to any open source enterprise. In a world with no friction -- I can switch my search preference to Yahoo.Com or MSN.Com or askjeeves.com in a hearbeat, as can you -- these questions become vital. They become the heart and soul of the enterprise.

I know they're in the heart-and-soul of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who co-founded Google.

I don't know that they're in the heart of Dr. Eric Schmidt, who now leads Google. I'm seeing growing evidence they're not.

And if they're not, then Google is threatened by his continuing at the helm.