I was just running out of interesting things to blog about when I read the Martin Wolk’s MSNBC story about Google’s resistance to the Government subpoena for search records. The mere fact of protesting sends a strong signal to Google users as Wolk writes. Marketing theorists now agree unanimously that "trust" is a vital part of any successful buyer-seller relationship. Operationally trust means that the supplier will do what is promised for the customer and the customer will reciprocate, in both B-to-C and B-to-B contexts. More importantly both buyer and seller will look out for each other’s interests, within the bounds of law, and both need not worry about back-stabbing by the other. As the relationship marketing literature will tell you , this theory is based on the theory of long term human relationships like marriage.
With a motto like "Don’t be evil" and a a search philosophy that is changing how students learn Google is set for great things. Revolutionary beta products like "Google Scholar" are now on university library websites and scholarly databases. Scholars check out each other ‘s citations and really have something to (somewhat!) agree about. Since fall 2005 I have been harping on Google as the first stop for my students and I do mildly regret at not buying Google shares. Perhaps I will start Google Ad-Sense on this website.; eventually.