Peek-A-Google

Forbes
June 2007

Google Maps' Street View may just bring the search and advertising giant down to earth. And it has also led to a debate about privacy and the ownership of information that is as important as it is difficult.

There's been some buzz recently about the new power of Street View--a common example has been the picture of a cat sitting in the window of a woman's residence--though others have discovered women's thongs showing (fairly unobtrusively) and a potential malefactor scaling a fence. Moreover, Google's readily accessible aerial shots were alleged to feature in the foiled terrorist attack against Kennedy Airport.

In fact, Street View is only one of many ventures that the company has embarked on--as its mission statement says--to organize the world's information. In addition to taking almost continual snapshots of the Internet and feeding them into its massive search engine, it is scanning entire libraries around the world, as well as storing the text of all the e-mails on its successful Gmail service.

Legal scholars, privacy experts and philosophers will no doubt argue about which, if any, lines Google has crossed. Economics--my shtick--can't settle these issues, but it can shed some light on them. To begin with, it is helpful to understand what business Google really is in, and for that, we have to follow the money trail. more