Simple answer: absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We all like the cool kids from Google. What is starting to scare some (and soon more) is the power that Google has. With no counter-powers. Google needs to think about a better, more sustainable, implementation of their do-no-evil brand.

Having an ombudsman, at the VP level, to which any "citizen" can go and object, would be a start. Think of it as the supreme court of Googlers. With transparent complaints and answers from humans.

It would cost a little bit of money, but it would go a long way to building long-term trust in the company. If Google doesn't come up with their own counter-power, someone else eventually will and Google won't like it!

Well, in theory we already have the counterweight, it's called government and it's supposed to protect us from evildoers.

In practice our governments are unfortunately struggling to adapt to this whole "globalization" thing where multi-national corporations are alarmingly ahead in most regards.

So far not many of the corps have abused their power in truly damaging ways (apart from evading taxes and the occassional uncomfortable law) but I do agree that this is a worrying tendency. It might even be part of the cause for the current meltdown.

But in the longterm I'm actually less worried about google here. Not because of their motto but simply because they're a rather small fish when you compare them to some of the energy-multis who operate at petrodollar scales.

An Ombudsman at every large corp is not the solution either way. That would just become another sock puppet on their salary-list.

The only cure seems to be global regulation of the financial sector - a subject that you don't hear much about in the middle of all these bailout discussions...