Why do people no longer trust Google?
Google, how I love thee. An innovative, forward-thinking company that has made the Web a much more accessible and useful place for us all. So why do people no longer trust the company that was once revered by all?
Google was founded ten years ago by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were mere students at Stanford University. It started out just a search engine, and that is still what most people around the world know the company for. But the company has seen rapid growth and now ranks alongside technology giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo.
When the company first started, and people began using the Google search engine in their millions, most people loved the idea of this plucky little company coming in and stealing the thunder from the big guys. A succession of other brilliant products and services including Google Earth, AdSense, and YouTube has kept Google’s popularity high.
But popularity is one thing, while trust is quite another. Every year sees the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe publish a ranking of the top 20 most trusted companies in the United States. As SFGate reports, Google has lost its place on the list in the space of 12 months.
Most Trusted Companies In The U.S. (MarketWatch)
1. American Express 12 Intuit (+7)
2. eBay (+6)
3. IBM (no change)
4. Amazon (+1)
5. Johnson & Johnson (+1)
-6. Hewlett Packard (+10)
-6. U.S. Postal Service (+1)
7. Procter & Gamble (+2)
8. Apple (new to the top 20)
9. Nationwide (remained the same)
10. Charles Schwab (-8)
11. USAA (+4)
12. Intuit (+7)
13. WebMD (-1)
14. Yahoo! (new to the top 20)
15. Facebook (new to the top 20)
-16. Disney (-1)
-16. AOL (-12)
17. Verizon (new to the top 20)
18. FedEx (new to the top 20)
19. US Bank (-2)
-20 Dell (-7)
-20 eLoan (-9)
Last year saw Google make the top 10 at number 10; this year Google didn’t even make the top 20. But it’s not that surprising considering the recent spate of controversy over how long Google keeps search data for and what it can do with that data. There’s also the fact that as companies grow, less people trust them. Rightly or wrongly that just seems to be a normal part of the human psyche.
Google told Pocket-Lint:
We work hard to earn and keep that trust with a long-standing commitment to protect to the privacy of our users’ information. The bedrock of our privacy philosophy is to be transparent about our approach to privacy and to give users meaningful control, and we continue to work to put these principles into practice and improve user privacy.
Other interesting results include Apple entering the top 20 for the first time, which seems bizarre seeing as it too is a huge company raking in colossal amounts of profit. Then there is WebMD at 13, which probably isn’t good given the propensity for Cyberchondria. Facebook also entered the top 20 despite the Beacon advertising controversy that refuses to die.
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December 16th, 2008
I’m not sure why it’s “bizarre” that Apple made it into the top 20; the top 20 is nothing but huge companies raking in profits. Apple does a good job of balancing customer service with high-quality products, and even in the face of bugs and outages and what-not it knows how to manage PR so that people’s trust remains unshaken. Microsoft could learn a thing or two about that.
Actually, so could Google: I don’t trust Google because of its insidious data tracking and profiling. I installed Chrome for a day, read the EULA, and then uninstalled it, noting in my “why did you uninstall” e-mail that the proprietary claims by Google on my Web usage through the browser were mind-numbingly vast. At that moment, I realized Google was evil, and I vowed never to use a Google product (other than google.com itself, but I utilize various browser add-ons to minimize Google’s ability to track me, though obviously they can still do it to some extent). A few days after Chrome was released they updated their EULA, but I got the message all the same.
Google is evil; the only reason most people don’t think so already is that they don’t know what all Google is doing with their Web browsing data and personal information. Every year as awareness of these things grows, Google’s trustworthiness will decline more and more.
December 18th, 2008
Google will be the first company to become president of the US.
May 5th, 2010
Today I notice that I can’t login to my gmail account. I come to conclusion that they just block my account for no reason – I didn’t forget my password as it was saved and I just can’t forget something I’m using more than 5years. I also don’t think anybody hack my account because if they did so, they could use my super sensitive information to harm me(and they had all the time in the world to do so). I won’t ever trust google again.