We know that both Google and Apple collect anonymous data about your phones when we use them. But Eric Schmidt from Google has one pressing thing to say: “You can trust us.”

Telegraph writes,

… Google gathers an awful lot of your data. Schmidt says this enables them to deliver better-targeted ads - more lucrative for Google, more relevant and less annoying for you. However, it raises privacy issues, something for which Google has been criticised.

Google, Schmidt says, is kept in check by its customers and by the competition: “All of our testing indicates that the vast majority of people are perfectly happy with our policy. And this message is the message that nobody wants to hear so let me say it again: the reality is we make decisions based on what the average user tells us and we do check. And the reason that you should trust us is that if we were to violate that trust people would move immediately to someone else. We’re very non-sticky so we have a very high interest in maintaining the trust of those users.”

Schmidt basically says people aren’t rioting over the Android Marketplace like they are on Apple’s App Store policies. But when you have the most smartphone customers, you’re bound to hear more voices. I don’t think Schmidt’s statements or bloggers complaints of Apple’s policies are indicative of anything major: Apple sells phones partly because of their App Store, which is leagues beyond the disaster that is the Android Marketplace (yes, I own an Android phone). There are very few Android apps worth downloading.

You can catch Schmidt’s statements at Telegraph.co.uk, which are nothing more than usual corporate communiqué.