[moe]

Well, in theory we already have the counterweight, it's called government and it's supposed to protect us from evildoers.

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...