Digital dominance:

the power of Google, Amazon, Faceboo
k, and Apple 
Autores:

Wilson, T. D.

Fuente:

Information Research; Sep2018, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p1-2, 2p

Tipo de documento:

Book Review

Materias:

Digital Dominance: The Power of Google, Amazon, Facebook & Apple (Book)
Moore, Martin
Tambini, Danian
Digital media
Nonfiction

Recuento total de palabras:

984

ISSN:

13681613

Número de acceso:

131926333

Base de datos:

Library & Information Science Source

Digital dominance:
the power of Google, Amazon, Faceboo
k, and Apple 
Moore, Martin and Tambini, Danian. (Eds.). Digital dominance: the power of Google,
Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. xii, 423 p. ISBN
978-01-19-084511-7. Paperback £22.99/$35.00
Given the current controversies over such things as the EU fining Google, the misuse
of Facebook data in elections in the USA and in the Brexit referendum in the UK, controversy in
the UK over the size of Amazon's tax bill, and Apple being fined for its operations in Ireland,
this book is timely. The charges against the tech giants are numerous, ranging from the
manipulation of sales income to avoid local taxes, occupying a monopoly position in the market,
and mis-use of data, to failing to monitor content provided by terrorist and far-right
organizations.
This book, edited by a couple of British academics, pulls together contributions from scholars
from the UK, Europe and the USA, presented in three sections, headed Economy, Society, and
Politics.
The four chapters under the heading of Economy, deal primarily with different aspects of the
monopolistic nature of the tech giants. Patrick Barwise and Leo Watkins chart the rise
of Apple, Facebook, Google (under its now parent name of Alphabet), Microsoft and Amazon,
to become the five most valuable public companies by market capitalization. They show how
these companies, in all cases starting small, have managed to grow by establishing themselves
as the prime movers in their industries and grow by capturing users and keeping them. And,
because they have been so successful in this way, they have become almost impossible to
replace, becoming almost monopolistic in their market power. Next, Diane Coyle shows how
anti-trust legislation in the USA has yet to come to grips with the problem of regulating
platforms, which have the characteristics of both firms and markets. She concludes that
'economics has yet to deliver practical antitrust tools to competition regulators, to enable them
to draw up theories of harm in platform markets of different kinds and deliver them empirically.
In Chapter 3, Inge Graef explores the role of data in the development of market power by the
tech giants. She notes that access to large amounts of data on consumers, or social media
participants, supports and helps to extend market power, but that the competition regulation is
not the only issue to be addressed, and such matters as data protection and consumer
protection have a role to play. Finally, in Chapter 4, Lina Khan charts the growth of Amazon,
which began as an online bookseller and now takes about 46% of retail sales in all sectors, as
well as providing cloud services, and producing books, films and TV programmes. The counter-
intuitive nature of Amazon's growth, in that it failed to make a profit in its first six years of
operation, but, nevertheless, had a continuously rising share price, must be pretty well unique,
and suggests that investors believed that the company was on the right track, regardless of its
negative profits. Like Coyle, Khan concludes that new anti-trust tools and legislation will be
required for a platform-based market such as that operated by Amazon.
I have dealt in some detail with this first section of the book because the economic issues are, I
believe, absolutely central to an understanding of how platform businesses have come into
being and of the competition issues they raise. I shall deal with the remaining two sections in
rather less detail.
In the second section, Society, most of the chapters deal with the issue of media diversity and
the impact of platforms such as Facebook and Google as information intermediaries. Sitting at
a computer, or, more likely these days, browsing on a mobile phone, we can either access a far
wider range of media sources, than in print-media past, or focus our attention on sources that
support our existing views of the world. In both cases, the role of traditional media, which are
both geographically- and time-bound in character, is diminished. Of course, the traditional media
owners fight back and, in Chapter 8, Schlosberg points out, that in spite of the impact of social
media, the convential media, through movement into the digital world, continue to set the news
agenda.
Since the Brexit referendum in the UK and the findings by the Electoral Commission regarding
the mis-use of campaign funds, as well as the mis-use of Facebook Data by Cambridge
Analytica, many people will be aware of the possibilities the "big data" from social media
companies offer for targeted political advertising. This is one of the political issues raised by
Damian Tambini in section three of the book, on Politics. Tambini analyses how political
campainging has shifted online, and how it works, and notes that a key problem is
the dominance of a single network, Facebook. Were there more such networks, he suggests,
the issue of election legitimacy would be reduced. Two of the chapters in this section deal with
the influence of search engines, or, more specifically, Google, in the way search results are
presented to the user. Again, like Tambini, Epstein points to the lack of competition in the
search engine business as a factor of significance.
For anyone with an interest in how the giant technology companies are affecting society, and
the problems of regulating their activities, this volume is essential reading. Any course in
economics or politics should put it on the reading list. I am often highly critical of compilations of
this kind, since all to often it appears that the editors have done little in selecting the contributing
authors: that is certainly not the case here, however, and Moore and Tambini are to be
congratulated in having assembled a group of expert authors who appear to have worked to an
agreed brief to put before the reader the issues that should concern all of us.
~~~~~~~~
By T. D. Wilson

Source: Information Research, Sep2018, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p1, 2p

Item: 131926333