A news story at Britian’s Observer points out something I’ve suspected for a while: Google is underselling its story to the press and the public.

Hard to believe when seemingly every news outlet — and certainly every business news outlet — is breathlessly awaiting word or rumor about the search behemoth’s potential IPO.

But by piecing together statements from various Google presentations, the Observer notes that Google is inconsistent — wildly inconsistent — when it talks about numbers related to its hardware horsepower. Why? Well, the Observer has a hunch, and it’s a damned smart one.

…The technical community has begun to realize that presentations by Google techies have been run through some kind of corporate filter before they make it into PowerPoint. The operation of the filter is erratic (it’s difficult for PR flacks effectively to censor geeks at the best of times), but it seems that the overall aim is to understate every aspect of Google’s technology and technical performance by several orders of magnitude.

The thinking: By keeping the company’s real power — the number of pages it has indexed and the processing power required to keep the search beast fed — under wraps, Google keeps potential competitors in the dark as to how much capital would be required to mount a real challenge for search dominance.

If true, this is a good example of smart PR being something other than the clarion horn of “get coverage at all costs.” So here’s a question:

What news/issues should your clients be working to keep out of the press right now, and how are you helping them?

I’m not talking about skeletons in the closet, toxic sludge or philandering executives; what I do mean is: Which of your clients’ strategic advantages are eroded by overly open communications, and how can you help solve that issue?

It’s a question worth thinking about.

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