I was talking with my student Dima today, and we were going over the recent controversy about Google’s “Street View” map feature and its potential privacy implications. And it occurred to me that Google has adopted a very powerful strategy for how it introduces new features, one that changes the game for how public consideration of its implications goes. Rather than announcing that it is about to begin to take photographs of every point on every street of major U.S. cities and posting them online, so you can see faces and license plates and questionable behavior and right into front windows, and then face the potential debater or outrage, they simply do it. They do it without fanfare, without even any public knowledge (a pretty amazing accomplishment for a project of this scope — but they seem to do it all the time).

So they still face the public debate, whether it sways in their favor or not. But the debate happens in the context of an existing feature — and, as is typical of Google, a beautifully designed and intuitive one — which can argue for its own value. If we were having this privacy debate about a feature yet to be designed, I think it would be much easier to see it only in the light of privacy risks, and the debate might even be intense enough to discourage Google from doing it. But now, its harder to argue when the tangible value of the feature is so palpably obvious.

This doesn’t always work — the uproar about the Facebook “News Feed” feature, which simply appeared rather than being announced, may have been actually more intense because it was already up and running, already revealing people’s every action on the network to all of their contacts. But it does let Google win a lot of support from those who might say, “sure, its got some privacy implications, but look how handy it is!” And, as Dima pointed out, it’s free. Which got us thinking about the cultural implications of free. Chris Anderson, author The Long Tail, is apparently working on a book called Free for 2008, discussing the cultural implications of goods that are priced at zero. Here’s one. There is an illusion of benevolence that seems to come with Google’s offerings: hey, here’s the greatest search engine you’ll ever find! Hey, do you want intuitively designed maps of the entire continent? Here you go. Need a better email client? Why not take ours.” Its not as if these are actually acts of benevolence. Google is a for-profit company, and quite a profitable one. But because there’s no visible price tag, no subscription fee, these services feel like gifts. When you pay for that music subscription service, or buy that expensive software, you are faced with the undeniable fact that the provider wants your money, and even in our consumer culture that comes with skepticism — am I being hoodwinked into a lousy product? Does this company have my best interests at heart, or just their own? I wonder if Google, and other providers of “free” stuff, subsequently get a bit of a pass from their consumers because of this seeming generosity.