Google has pretty much established itself as "anything goes" company. So no matter what you pitch, you'd worry about them stealing your idea.
And why should Google back someone like you with no connections/traction etc, if they have plenty of resources to implement your idea on their own.
The "steal my idea" thing is one of those notions that makes sense until you're out there for a little while. I worried about it too until I realized, wait, nobody cares. A lot of good ideas seem to only look good in retrospect.
Google, "We're building better search." "Uh, huh. Yeah. You do that. Graphs you say? Dweebs."
Microsoft, "We're building a commodity operating system." "Without a computer? Why?"
Facebook, "We're starting a social network for college students." "Uhm, like MySpace?"
Furthermore google knows that such an event would kill their credibility as a VC instantly and hurt the Google brand as a whole due to the motto violation.
I can't think of an idea or business-plan that could possibly be worth that risk, therefor I assume google will take proper care of confidentiality.
I've been reading comments on the Google Ventures launch on HN, TechCrunch, CNet and others........the general tone is ugly. Why is it that Google was beloved as a young, underdog company but after it achieves what we all strive for....true global impact....people become skeptics and, almost, root for their demise? Human nature or something more?
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!
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...