This week Google has topped a poll of the UK’s “most-loved” brands. Yet amongst some of the people I known the word Google is starting to be used with the distain once only reserved for Microsoft.

Although Google is building vast mass market appeal, I am starting to feel very different about the brand. I have no problem with the products. The search is powerful and pretty much unrivalled, I really like Google Maps it’s a fantastic implementation. The question I keep asking myself is: why I am falling out of love with Google.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Google stopped being the Berkeley geeks that made good and became the next aggressive corporate giant. This is definitely part of the problem. Allowing China to sensor its services could well be the event that has broken a lot of rose tinted visions of the company.

But the growing corporate feel to the brand is not the only problem.

Although Google has always had a strong sense of innovation, individuality and rock solid service it has never been very inclusive. It has never built the fanatical tribalism of other brands like Apple. Any efforts to generate a community like Gmail have always been slightly blackened by a culture of secrecy.

Fundamentally for me Google is not engaging with its consumers or the wider community with anything like the passion I would have expected. Google has a lot to learn about cultivation and collaboration.

CEO Eric Schmidt recently said in a pretty frank statement “We are doing too many things that people care about to keep our mouths shut.”

In comparison Yahoo is becoming very adapt at cultivating brand support through openness and collaboration. Beyond the new developer network Yahoo has hired some of the most focal members of the blogsphere. It is also buying the likes of flickr and del.icio.us which have some of the loyalist communities. It is fostering a very strong relationship with early adopteders and thought leaders. Google is here to stay, but it needs to changes its ways.