Behavioral surplus is data used beyond improving search service quality

Evidence

The raw materials that had been solely used to improve the quality of search results would now also be put to use in the service of targeting advertising to individual users. Some data would continue to be applied to service improvement, but the growing stores of collateral signals would be repurposed to improve the profitability of ads for both Google and its advertisers. These behavioral data available for uses beyond service improvement constituted a surplus, and it was on the strength of this behavioral surplus that the young company would find its way to the “sustained and exponential profits” that would be necessary for survival. Thanks to a perceived emergency, a new mutation began to gather form and quietly slip its moorings in the implicit advocacy-oriented social contract of the firm’s original relationship with users. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 232

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the book’s core definition of behavioral surplus as data repurposed beyond service improvement.
• XREF: Connects to the prior chapter’s discussion of prediction markets and behavioral data as the raw material of a new economic logic. — connects to: Behavioral surplus flows back to shape driver behavior and feed prediction futures markets — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 679; User-downloadable personal data excludes the behavioral surplus that firms actually exploit. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1545; Platforms’ crisis responses double down on behavioral surplus extraction — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1624 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Google’s ad-ranking innovation operationalized behavioral surplus as its core asset #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 239
• Measuring attention as data enables treating it as a monetizable resource #expands (0.80)