US losing trust in Google privacy?

Google has fallen off the top 20 list of the most trusted US companies for privacy, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday.

The internet search giant was ranked number 10 last year but slipped off into the ether this year as the 6,500 people surveyed by the Ponemon Institute may have associated Google with "big company syndrome", the Chronicle story reported. TRUSTe co-sponsored the survey. The company aims to serve as the gold seal of the internet, by identifying various websites as trustworthy through its Web Privacy Seal, Email Privacy Seal, and Trusted Download programs.

In the fifth annual survey, people were asked to name "which companies they thought were most trustworthy and which did the best job safeguarding personal information", according to a press release Monday.

A number of technology companies saw their ranking change, including eBay and Yahoo!, according to the press release. "While the financial services sector slipped amid industry-wide woes, the technology sector showed marked improvement as eBay, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and HP all bettered previous rankings. Also of note, Facebook moved into the top 20 for the first time, signifying an increased trust in social networking as a mainstream communications tool," it said.

Here are the top companies as ranked in the survey:

1. American Express
2. eBay (up six places)
3. IBM
4. Amazon (up from fifth)
5. Johnson & Johnson
6. HP (up 10 places), US Postal Service
7. Procter & Gamble
8. Apple (new to the top 20)
9. Nationwide
10. Charles Schwab
11. USAA
12. Intuit
13. WebMD
14. Yahoo! (new to the top 20)
15. Facebook (new to the top 20)
16. Disney, AOL
17. Verizon
18. FedEx
19. US Bank
20. Dell (down seven places), eLoan

Original article: Google slips from list of top companies on privacy from CNET News.com