Laurie: Improving SSL certificate security

Google does indeed have its own CA; you can tell simply by looking at the cert chain on https://encrypted.google.com

0: subject=/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Google Inc/CN=*.google.com
issuer=/C=US/O=Google Inc/CN=Google Internet Authority

1: subject=/C=US/O=Google Inc/CN=Google Internet Authority
issuer=/C=US/O=Equifax/OU=Equifax Secure Certificate Authority

As the previous comment says, without a method to restrict the certificates they're allowed to issue, that doesn't make the CA system any more secure, it makes it less secure.