Well, here's a few things off of the top of my head that have eroded my trust:
1. Contracts with the Department of Defense
2. Participation in project PRISM
3. The Google Graveyard (https://killedbygoogle.com/)
4. Abandoning "Don't be evil"
1. Contracts with the Department of Defense
2. Participation in project PRISM
3. The Google Graveyard (https://killedbygoogle.com/)
4. Abandoning "Don't be evil"
I'm an ex-Googler, and I know how PRISM worked. This did not happen. All the statements made in https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html are true at the time they were written. The sentiment in the title of that post accurately reflects how everybody involved felt about it.
(I can't talk about whether they're still true because I've not been there in nearly two years, I wouldn't know)
But from the blog:
> We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
Does not match up
In fact, the design of the NSA's interception nodes, rulesets and filtering systems resemble strongly many of Google's internal technologies (as evidenced by a leaked config file in the snowden documents)
The poster, today, is aware of how PRISM worked.
The blog author, then, was not aware that PRISM existed.
It's not as if that would be widely announced, even internally.
Google was not innocent in the matter (there is clear public evidence internal Google data got into the hands of the NSA), but it appears that data was stolen due to poor security of Google's systems rather than handed over voluntarily. Google underestimated the abilities of their adversary. I don't believe any other company back then would have been resistant to the same attack.
There is sufficient evidence in the leaked snowden docs and public blog posts to figure out what the bug was and how it has been fixed.
On the other hand, Google had to back down [2]. I don't think this would work out for Google in the long term, that is, if they keep caving in to pressure from employees. Maybe trust erosion is inevitable if you're trying to pretend you're not just another profit-making corporation.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18240300/microsoft-ceo-de...
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/01...
In particular using "institutions we have elected to do X" instead of just "institutions that do X" steps around the question whether the institutions really do X. Which is, incidentally, the major concern of the opponents.
> He said he tries “to understand when I feel there is something which caused breaking of trust and see what we can do to improve,” adding that “it’s definitely gotten harder to do this at the scale we are doing it.”
It's funny how concepts that any 15-year-old could grasp become "harder to understand" when someone offer you millions of dollars to not understand them.