Google recruited businesses as collaborators by framing surveillance as a premium service

Evidence

Google exhorted consumer-facing businesses to “invite customers inside.” With its “Business View,” consumers would be able to see inside thousands of hotels, restaurants, and other destinations. Search listings would feature the new Street View content. Hotel listings would offer a virtual tour of the properties. “Give them the confidence they’re seeking,” Google told its business marketplace, by allowing consumers “to experience your location before they arrive.” Google asserted that virtual tours “double bookings,” and it instated a certification program that enabled businesses to hire a Google-approved freelance photographer to produce images for Street View. These extraordinary new redirection tactics aimed to flip the old pattern. They reframed Street View from an edgy incursion circumventing resistance through stealth to an opulent VIP tent where businesses scrambled for an entry pass. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 479

Categorization

• XREF: The redirection tactic — turning resistance targets into willing participants — parallels the ‘complaints about immodesty’ moral-panic structure where the object of policing becomes a status marker. — connects to: Google’s ad-sales leaders carried its surveillance model to other firms — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 528; Traditional industries like insurance now explicitly covet surveillance revenues modeled on Google — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 664

Broader Connections

• Google’s ad-sales leaders carried its surveillance model to other firms #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 528
• Traditional industries like insurance now explicitly covet surveillance revenues modeled on Google #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 664