Behavioral surplus windfalls funded Google’s de facto monopoly in Search

Evidence

The scale of surplus expropriation that was possible at Google would soon eliminate all serious competitors to its core search business as the windfall earnings from leveraging behavioral surplus were used to continuously draw more users into its net, thus establishing its de facto monopoly in Search. On the strength of Google’s inventions, discoveries, and strategies, it became the mother ship and ideal type of a new economic logic based on fortune-telling and selling—an ancient and eternally lucrative craft that has fed on humanity’s confrontation with uncertainty from the beginning of the human story. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 277

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘fortune-telling and selling’ framing parallels Marx’s analysis of capital accumulation and could connect to Berardi’s ‘the soul at work’. — connects to: Google’s behavioral surplus exploitation produced a 3,590 percent revenue surge in four years — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 273; Google’s ad-ranking innovation operationalized behavioral surplus as its core asset — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 239; Behavioral surplus from targeted advertising drove nearly all Google revenue by 2016 — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 294 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes fortune-telling/selling as the core economic logic of surveillance capitalism, linking prediction to ancient uncertainty.

Broader Connections

• Behavioral surplus is data used beyond improving search service quality #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 232
• Google’s ad-ranking innovation operationalized behavioral surplus as its core asset #qualifies (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 239
• Behavioral surplus from targeted advertising drove nearly all Google revenue by 2016 #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 294
• Early Google ran a self-contained behavioral value reinvestment cycle treating users as ends #corroborates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 217