Somewhere along my career I heard that character is defined by who or what you choose to fight against. A character’s foils define who he or she is—and “define” here means both creating and describing. Churchill was defined by his stand against Hitler. Lincoln was defined by his belief in a unified United States. And Superman is defined by his fight against those who would bring evil upon mankind. I keep this in mind here at this blog, choosing to call out meaningless marketers from time to time, at risk of pissing off prospective clients and partners. This lesson can be applied to Brand Characters as well, and Google—the most valuable brand in the world—took a large step toward further defining and improving itself by taking a stand against the evil within the Chinese government last week.

For those who missed the news, last week Google issued a threat to shut down its operations in China after it discovered several, likely government-backed attempts to hack into its servers in order to uncover dissidents’ emails. Google also spoke against the continuing censorship of search results. The business press expressed general shock and awe at the move, wondering how any company could ignore China, and then speculating that this was merely a way for Google to save face in a market where it is not the leader.

I do believe this was a highly calculated move by Google and its company leaders—they would never make such a big move without a lot of strategic thinking and analysis. However I believe the company’s choice is not another Machiavellian move by a bunch of MBAs. Rather, it is the product of a company culture that is founded on a desire to truly improve the world, and a fear for “doing evil.”

Since its very early days as a public company, Google has acted in ways that exemplify its culture, while founding hardcore capitalists. Google allows people to spend 20% of their time on projects of their own choosing. They splurge on free gourmet meals for all employees. And when the company issued an IPO it warned prospective shareholders that it would focus on the long term and refrain from artificially smoothing out earnings results to make large investors happy.

Perhaps one of its most-debated cultural features is the company’s belief that “You can make money without doing evil.” This phrase has attracted many positive feelings toward Google, especially in the technology world where everyone from dominant leaders such as Microsoft to legions of spammers and phishers abuse their access to our computers. This statement has opened Google up to criticism as well—ranging from its avoidance of taxes in the U.K. to using its leading search business to crowd out competitors in new markets. But nothing challenged the company more both internally and among the court of public opinion as when Google agreed to the Chinese government’s demand for censored results when it entered the country in January 2006.

We will likely never know what the conversations were like back then or now in the offices of Google’s leadership. But I believe the censorship issue has been a personal pain-point for some time. I choose the words “personal pain-point” very carefully, as I believe these leaders and many Google employees have had serious misgivings about playing along with government censorship. This is a company that believes that access to information can make the world a better place. The leaders have more money than they could ever spend. And they have a lot of people on their side. The flagrant hacking attempt was probably the personal breaking point.

This, my friends, is why Google is the best brand in the world. The company and its people believe in something good, and genuinely desire to make the world a better place. This is why people in China are laying flowers at the company headquarters sign in Beijing. And if it continues to follow these core values, Google will be a leading company for many years to come. Who knows—Google might even help finally usher in human rights reforms and freedoms in one of the largest corners of the world.

One of the other interesting lessons here is to observe how few companies we could imagine taking a similar stand. No other tech company jumped to Google’s side, and I struggle to think of any other large company in any industry that might follow its lead (much less lead to begin with). Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has already blown off any thoughts of leaving the country. Not surprising at all; this follows Ballmer’s personality and Microsoft’s culture very well—it is a company based on beating competitors and retaining power. At least he has a personal and company culture, I suppose, as most leaders are simply beholden to the annual bonus and short-term shareholder demands.

I will continue to follow this story closely and root for Google in its heroic stand against evil. Meanwhile, I’ll continue using as many Google products and services as I can get my hands on. I hope you do the same.