Google isn't a stranger to bad publicity. Privacy advocates aren't exactly the biggest fans of the company. And CEO Eric Schmidt didn't win over many people with his infamous statement about online privacy last month: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Those recent Gmail outages stung too.

But the Nexus One debacle -- combined with investor concerns that Google's potential pullout of China could negatively affect its future growth -- could make this one of the search powerhouse's worst weeks ever.