Geek In Disguise

Interesting. I'm not a huge Google fanboy, but my reading of that statement was more like "Our business relies on trust, and if we are not trustworty we won't have any business". I suppose you could take it either way.

I think you read that statement differently from how he intended it. By your "our duty as a consumer" comment, I get the feeling you interpret Page's phrase as telling people that "you should trust us, because we need you". The way I read it, though, it means "we need your business, and we can't do that without your trust, so we'd better make sure that we are trustworthy so that you do trust us".

And I suppose that any company that provides a service is basically answerable to its customers. Shareholders ought to recognise that. If the customers aren't happy, then business is bad, and that is of course bad for the shareholders again.

Pardon me if I'm incorrect, but those are the very same words Microsoft has used at EVERY Worldwide Partner Conference I've ever been to, and Microsoft continues to break into more and more areas to compete directly with the Partners.

I'd give Google a very big edge over Microsoft in the trust area. After all, which one has had an intercontinental lawsuit over abuse of monopoly powers?

-Vlad

Yep, I think you've definitely misinterpreted that one (and I'm not a Larry fan) - to me he's clearly saying that they depend on people's trust to stay in business (which is self-evidently true), and strongly implying that it's up to them (Google) to maintain that trust.

I can't honestly see anything objectionable in that statement.

What about this?

Google hosting malware? Google says they were!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1053

one of the definitions of the word Trust is: Integrity and another is confidence in someone/something. The fact that so many people have read the statement differently only leaves Google open to a ? mark about what they actually mean.Trust has to earned.