Google Leverages Its Trust

December 15, 2004

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David says that Google's angle on snapping up library content is to prevent banner farmers from scanning it all in and wrapping AdSense around it.

That may be, but I can't help but think this is also a defensive move, based on leveraging one of the assets they have against Microsoft in the search war: Trust. Google still has a good enough reputation that some of the finest institutions in the world will trust their knowledge and assets to a publicly held company. That's astonishing, especially given the anti-corporate slant that a lot of universities have.

Google's canny to take advantage of that now, but I'm wondering if they'd be able to do the same thing a year from now. Interestingly, Microsoft's never been able to really have the trust of universities, because they went from being in a tech industry that was then still not respected to being a huge economic and cultural force that schools didn't trust. This, despite the fact that Microsoft still spends a lot more on research and shares more of its work with schools than Google does.

3 TrackBacks

John Udell writes about Google and Libraries. Interesting developments. More on this from Anil Dash. Read More

The conventional wisdom here is simple: Google is trustworthy, Microsoft is not. These assumptions have thus far displayed a remarkable inertia and resistance to change. Google's "creepy" Gmail has thus far scared off few besides dedicated privacy zeal... Read More

Mark Rosensweig and I are on ALA Council together. Once in a while our planets align on an issue. I won't say that I agree with Mark word for word on Google Print, but he has articulated some concerns percolating... Read More

4 Comments

Excuse me? "... the anti-corporate slant that a lof of universities have ..." I've never set foot on the Harvard Campus thank G-d, but at Stanford (one of the other participating schools) you can't sneeze without seeing 8 different corporate names or logos
. In fact, many people are of the mind that Hennessey was taken on as Pres entirely because of his corporate connections.

Can the 'acceptance' side of this be devolved to a branding argument?

Google is your friend.

Microsoft is greedy.

(Yes I know that's not how MS brand themselves, I'm talking about perception of brand).

Is it that simple?

I wonder how this would be if Apple were in MS's position (presuming they could retain their current brand image).

Just a thought.

Can the 'acceptance' side of this be devolved to a branding argument?

Google is your friend.

Microsoft is greedy.

Every day, a new star is born. I turned my head, blushed, fluttered my hand up to my collarbone prettily, and gulped the last of my champagne. I know when I’ve been beaten.

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