The experimental feature that Marissa Mayer announced last week is becoming available today for everyone to try.  Google Social Search promises to help users "find more relevant public content from your broader social circle."

The premise is simple: people value their acquaintances’ content more than that of random strangers.  So Google Social Search brings content from your social circle to the forefront, perhaps showing a friend’s or coworker’s take on a restaurant rather than (or in addition to) whatever the local newspaper reviewer had to say.

On the Official Google Blog, Maureen Heymans and Murali Viswanathan explained, "The way we do it is by building a social circle of your friends and contacts using the connections linked from your public Google profile, such as the people you’re following on Twitter or FriendFeed. . . .  If you use Gmail, we’ll also include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family, and coworkers groups.  And if you use Google Reader, we’ll include some websites from your subscriptions as part of your social search results.

As just about everybody knows, Google takes great care of its employees, has been something of a media darling, and uses "don’t be evil" as the first three words of its official Code of Conduct.  However, Google’s not perfect, and Matt Cutts recently discussed a few potential problems related to its image.

Cutts drew on a post written by Anil Dash as a starting point.  Dash’s post is titled "Google’s Microsoft Moment," which should give you an idea of where he headed (although Dash didn’t say anything spiteful, and Cutts responded with the title of "Why Googlers should read Anil Dash’s post").

Anyway, Cutts stated, "We still use ‘don’t be evil’ as a guiding principle inside Google, but I’ve noticed fewer and fewer people outside Google mentioning the phrase.  That raises the worrying possibility that people are starting to think of Google as just another big company."

And indeed, Google’s got a market cap of roughly $133 billion, which is a hard figure to ignore.  It’s led to people analyzing the "bottom line" of the company’s every move, finding profit motives in what look like philanthropic gestures.

Cutts acknowledged this by writing, "[M]any people outside the company perceive Google as a huge company with an outsized shadow.  We can scare people, even when we’re trying not to."

One other issue Cutts identified – and this ties to his "read Anil Dash’s post" recommendation – is that Googlers can be offended by users’ feedback.  Cutts argued that spirited feedback proves users care, and should be interpreted as constructive criticism, not condemnation.

It’s interesting to see such an honest discussion of a corporation’s (perceived) faults posted by an employee on a public blog.  Also interesting is the task with which Cutts charged his coworkers: "ask yourself how you can help make another one of those moments where you’re proud to work at Google.  I think those moments are a great way to keep from becoming just another large company."