I feel the same way. More than any other company, I definitely felt like Google understood that if its privacy story breaks down, the party ends.
Where they tended to fall on their face was a patriarchal assumption that their privacy model was always the best one ("What do you *mean* it's a problem populating your Buzz friend list from your most-often-contacted Gmail addresses?"), but at least there *was* a model and it was taken seriously; people who broke policy actually got fired.