Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) may be a company based on reality after all. In addition to the company's search market share and increasing brand awareness worldwide, its lavish employee perks and working conditions have earned it an enviable position among IT and software workers. Free bus rides to work, free food and drink and other nice perks are part of working for the internet giant. Just don't ask about its daycare facilities.

Google announced last week that it would be raising the prices of its infant care services by almost 75%. This after bringing in employees to tell them of the change in advance and gauge their collective feedback. Although many parents were left in awe (as in, how could Google do this!), the company decided to implement the plan gradually over five quarters and reduce the price increase. The annual daycare costs for two kids would have risen from $33,000 per year to $57,000 per year (it's not clear how much the increase was reduced). Is Google doing evil here? Nope -- just joining reality.

The comedown from employees as Google starts implementing policies that most (if not all) public companies already have will be harsh. If you are a Google shareholder, do you like all that dough being used to pamper Google employees with all those freebies? Does it make the company more competitive and allows workers to be as productive as possible? In many ways, it does. Google doesn't do things like this out of the goodness of its heart. It's all about wringing the best work from each worker. If those perks start getting stripped away, Google may join the ranks of "normal" public companies. Its workers don't want that.