Jarrell Jackson

PHIL355E

2/3/2025

As Google introduced Street View, where was the privacy? The idea of privacy was not a thought from Google with complaints coming from people worried about their privacy, different countries having different privacy laws, and Google put the duty of the consumer – IF they found their privacy had been breached. The idea of launching a street view  for the population sounded like a good idea right up until people began requesting pictures to be blurred, license plates to be blurred, and pictures showing more than they should to be removed. Not only did Google have to contend with the change of pictures for consumers, they also had to deal with different privacy laws across countries. In this case analysis, I will argue the idea of utilitarianism shows that while Google Street View provides great benefits to society, Street View’s initial launch failed miserably with privacy. To minimize the harm to individuals, Google should have implemented stronger privacy protection from the start.

Floridi utilized several key concepts through utilitarianism  regarding privacy models. Of those, I believe the main concepts are: the infosphere, information ethics, and ontological friction. These three key concepts can be discussed and applied towards privacy while keeping a utilitarian approach in mind. The effects of Google may have resulted in a different outcome if they had completed a privacy concern assessment prior to launching Street View. As we take this into consideration, let’s discuss the infosphere concept first.

The infosphere concept discusses how information flows seamlessly and freely in digital space within an environment called the digital environment. By way of the environment, societies and countries have connectivity to each other. With this thought in mind, what does that do to the privacy model? These open connections can raise ethical concerns of the amount of private information and how it is treated within the environment. This concept shows how Google’s ignorance of compromising an individual’s privacy portrays the over lack of regard for their infosphere.

Along with the infosphere, Floridi brings out the concept of information ethics and how that can be seen in a company’s environment. The concept of information ethics provides a company a framework allowing them to think about how digital technological advances can interact with private information.Google could have taken into consideration the impacts upon individual privacy by these advances. With Google’s Street View picking up large amounts of personal data, Google could have assessed the criticality of this launch and what it would mean to society. Finally, the concept of ontological friction. Ontological friction, based on Floridi’s concept, is the difficulty of limiting personal data within a digital environment. While appearing seamless, the environment is intertwined to the point it is hard to gain control over individual circumstances. As individuals try to hold onto privacy, their grasp is slipping away through the interactions of the digital environment. With Google’s Street View launch, the amount of personal data captured can be enormous compared to relatively small complaints. Google did not provide a clear enough way for individuals to opt out, stop the collection, have the ability to control how their pictures are used, or provide a method for feedback.

Looking at Floridi’s concepts with a utilitarian lens, Google’s Street View launch provided easier navigation and enhanced accessibility to the information captured by the cameras. While this does align with the concept of utilitarianism – capturing the greater good for the greatest number – it does not provide safeguards around capturing such information and the harm it does to individuals who have not had the opportunity to opt in/out or provided consent to be captured or portrayed in that manner. So what if Google had to push back the launch date by assessing these issues. They would have been better off to research the ethical cost of what it meant to impact society like this. By not assessing this risk, Google failed to review the harm and ignored the risk of overall impact and thus the impact proved to be negative. If Google had reviewed or assessed the impacts to society, it could have been positive for Google.

Analysing Grimmelmann’s concepts of online governance and user autonomy, while hinging ever so slightly on the concept of ethical responsibility, we can also see where the onus was on Google to provide an assessment of how the launch of Street View would have given the company a different lens to evaluate their policy and potentially revamp their discovery prior to launch. In this manner, a company can ultimately increase simple awareness for privacy by utilizing a utilitarian approach model. With this in mind, let’s discuss Grimmelmann’s first concept of online governance.

Online governance is the concept whereby the duty is placed strictly on the companies to manage their online platform interactions and realize the consequences. With new technological creations, companies have the ability to change the course of action many companies take prior to launching a new innovation into the digital environment. It is through this technical power, companies like Google with their online platform, can shape behaviors and transition policies in online rights of the consumers, large companies can take their power and utilize it for good. Yes even in a utilitarian approach to do the most good for the most individuals by overcoming the privacy negligence aspect. You mean the responsibility will be placed solely on the company for their platform innovations and the consumer is let off free and clear? That is not the intent and as I delve into Grimmelmann’s next concept of user autonomy, this will become more evident.

User autonomy is the next of Grimmelmann’s concepts where he points out users have certain abilities – the ability to control their presence online and their ability to decide when and how long they are online. This does not remove the duty on the company to launch within their platform environment with a  thoughtful approach to consumer privacy rights, but it does allow the user to share in that responsibility by how they control their online presence. As a consumer utilizes new and exciting innovations online, it is up to that user to understand working on companies platforms and/or playing on early versions of new launches, they must discretion. While this does not release the company from their responsibilities, it does demonstrate a shared responsibility with the user through user autonomy.

We should also look at the ethical responsibility of a company and how they should do more than simply follow the law. It pushes platform environments to think of ethical considerations that are not bound by law. Google would have been within the law for their launch of Street View, however they clearly were not within the boundaries of ethics when they chose to ignore privacy responsibilities and thus harmed the user. For this launch, if Google had completed an assessment where ethics were centered along with the boundaries of law, they would have understood the ramifications of launching without such an assessment being done. A simple customer experience model would have provided Google with a much needed understanding of their launch and provided a more positive experience for the users.

Trying Grimmelmann’s concepts to a utilitarian approach while sprinkling in ethical responsibilities, allow for the individuals to see how any assessment of Google would have circumvented the issues Google faced with the launch of Street View. This launch is a morbid example of how Google sought to ignore user autonomy and did not try to set a precedence for online governance. Instead, Google ignored an ethical responsibility and launched Street View and simply moved on to the next great innovation on their plate. Google failed miserably to apply any concept from Grimmelmann and thus delivered to the user a negative privacy impact. With this analysis, we simply demand Google to just do better.

As I look from the utilitarianism approach, the launch of Google’s Street View shows that the haste of the platform to go to market minimized the benefits it offered to the public. Not only was it a hasty marketing decision, it also caused harm to individuals by neglecting privacy concerns. To implement properly, Google should have put in place stronger privacy protection from the beginning. By being conscious of both individual autonomy and individual privacy, Google would have averted the toll it took at unnecessary expense. By taking a more ethical approach with proactive safeguards, Google would still have achieved its goals of going to market but would have minimized the harm to privacy, trust, and inherited consent.

I expect objections like public places are not assumed to be private, however looking at it from a utilitarian point of view people were caught in less than pleasing circumstances feeling they had their privacy invaded. Google should have realized their profitable outcome would have caused somewhat of a psychological concern thus outweighing Google’s benefit. I feel Google could have been successful and mitigating public concerts while giving consideration to the ethics of their Street View release.

In conclusion, I believe Google is a shining example portraying why online platforms should adopt additional practices. Through adoption of these additional practices, and not only dealing with legal concerns, Google could have addressed ethics and doing the right thing. By doing this, companies can ensure their releases benefit both the company and the individuals they do business with and minimize harm.