Billy's right. The Trustworthy Computing push at MS includes our business practices in addition to the product/code stuff that Scoble mentions.

In the end, I think establishing trust means that people feel they've been treated fairly and predictably by MS as a company and by the experiences they have with our products.

One of the big shifts I'm starting to see internally is that Microsofties are starting to understand why people might not trust us. I realize that externally, it might sound weird that we don't really get this, but it's kind of true. In general, individuals and teams at MS really do believe they're doing the right thing for users and the world. We work hard and care a lot about what we do.

Therefore, it's super frustrating to have our mistakes be perceived as evil and for nefarious plots to be assigned to simple feature or policy ideas (however naive they may have been -- remember smart tags in IE?) However, for me personally, as I meet with more customers and spend more time in newsgroups and forums like this, I've begun to understand how our actions might be perceived regardless of our intent. It's changed my behavior, and I've seen the change in others as well.

That said, there are some things that others will need to recognize. We're not a charity, a utility, or a public service. We exist to compete and make money. We do that by building the products we think best and letting the market decide. We also will compete aggressively but fairly; we ask no quarter and offer none.

So, to wrap up, I think that Trustworthy Computing from the product side is about giving users control over their computing experience; they control what's running on their computer, what information they disclose, and when the machine is working and not. On the business side, customers should understand the set of business rules and pricing and have them applied consistently and fairly. I'm sure ms.com has a more polished version of that, but that's my take as a solider on the ground.