A recent annual report from Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe ranks the top four most trusted companies as American Express, eBay, IBM, and Amazon. However Google did not make the top 20, yet Yahoo! and Facebook made the top 20 for the first time. This makes for interesting news, but given the search traffic and size of Google it seems strange.
Google IS The Main Search Engine
The latest rankings of search engines shows that Google accounts for 63.1%, Yahoo! 20.5%, Microsoft 8.5%, Ask 4.2%, AOL 3.7%. Since Yahoo! and AOL are in the top 20 most trusted companies and account for only 12.2% of the searches, it makes the Google’s 63.1% seem even more peculiar that it is not in the top 20. Apparently the overwhelming majority of searches are made on a site that is not as trustworthy as Amazon.
Who’s Complaining about Google Now?
A group of academics and lawyers in Japan is demanding that Google stop making pictures of streets in Japan and delete all images already captured. You may not be aware that Google maps has driven vehicles around the world with cameras taking 360 degree pictures at ground level. Which is fine of course if you are looking at someone else’s property or planning a trip, but do people really want to have their homes displayed for the world to see? Another big question is, how is Google monetizing this? Perhaps this is partially the reason that Google is not one of the top trusted companies.