<rant type="philosophical">

There are roughly three level of trust that people can have about something or somebody.

1) Credit is the lowest level. It is based on nothing more than a history of good conduct, a statistical likelihood of good conduct, or some other objective data about the person or entity in question. This is the highest level of trust that most reasonable people are willing to grant to others that they don't know very well, such as the guy who just walked into the bank looking for a loan. When you give someone credit but they turn out to be a bad investment, you may lose some money or stuff but you generally don't need to feel personally hurt.

2) Trust, in a narrow sense, is the next higher level. It is based partly on a history of good conduct, but also partly on a deeper understanding of them that tells you they care personally about you and therefore they'll try not to betray your expectations. This is the level of trust that people usually exchange with friends, old-time acquaintances, loyal pets and close relatives. If the person you trusted betrays your trust, you feel personally hurt.

3) Faith is the highest level. It need not be based on any actual history of good conduct, and it may even be granted despite a history of unwanted conduct. Most people reserve faith to supernatural entities (if they exist) and very close family members. A deeply religious person keeps faith in God even if God appears to turn a blind eye to his misfortunes. A parent keeps faith in her developmentally challenged child even if the child has experienced nothing but a series of failures so far. If you put faith in somebody and they wilfully, maliciously betray you, you are destroyed.

Too often, governments and corporations ask us to have Faith in them. This is ridiculous, especially when there's been a series of events that clearly explain why people don't want to trust them. It also makes a perverse sense because a) Faith is the only level of trust that can be granted despite evidence to the contrary, and b) Faith ties the believer so strongly with the believed that they can now pull off bullshit like "we're on the same boat" or "we're too big to fail".

Since Google and Microsoft are neither God nor your mom, reasonable folks should refuse to grant them Faith and consider downgrading them to either Trust or Credit, if anything at all.

In the case of most large multinational corporations that sell proprietary, probably backdoor-ridden software, the best we can grant them is Credit -- a cold, rational analysis based on how they, as rational self-interested actors, are likely to behave.

Meanwhile, some organizations offer us a deeper look into how they and their products work. This is the beauty of open-source software and the nonprofits that maintain them, like Mozilla. The deeper understanding (either of code or of the people involved) that they offer is what makes me feel that they are worthy of Trust, not just Credit.

But Trust still requires evidence-based judgment. Hence "Trust but Verify". A deterministic build system, for example, adds evidence for Trust.

If you don't feel any need to verify, that's Faith, not Trust. Remember, nobody deserves Faith except gods (if they exist) and your very closest kin.

</rant><sorry for="wall of text" />