DON’T BE EVIL — OR STUPID. OR STUPIDLY EVIL:

Google is a company with a cute name and a cuddly reputation; 30-percent profit margins and a market capitalization of $144 billion; and a freshly inked, sweetheart deal to build a data center in the Caldwell County city of Lenoir.

Google’s reputation is one of the keys to its financial success. People trust the company, which uses “Don’t be evil” as its unofficial corporate motto, to safeguard their privacy and provide accurate, unbiased information as they search the Web and use its other online services. If Google comes to be seen as just another soulless moneymaking machine, it might lose some of its competitive advantage.

And that’s what makes the California company’s behavior as it negotiated its Tar Heel deal so hard to understand. Google strong-armed the public partners with which it worked on the incentive package, in ways that would be unseemly even for a company that doesn’t publish a lengthy Code of Conduct that says things like, “Being a Googler means holding yourself to the highest possible standard of ethical business conduct. … When it comes to ethical conduct, we believe in erring on the side of caution.”

Except, apparently, when an annualized amount equal to two-tenths of 1 percent of its profits for the trailing 12 months is on the line. . . . But it turns out that there was a lot more to the story. Google leaned hard on North Carolina lawmakers and officials, not just to get the fattest deal possible but to choke off the flow of information along the way.

As I’ve noted before, Google’s reputation is its biggest asset, as it operates in areas that are open to competition. I’m surprised that it’s so careless of the value of that asset.