Google dominates the infrastructure behind hidden app connections to behavioral surplus markets.
Evidence
Another detailed study, by Luigi Vigneri and his colleagues at EURECOM in 2015, looked closely at the 5,000 newest and most popular applications in the Google Play store. Researchers found that 500 of these apps connect to more than 500 distinct URLs, and 25 connect to more than 1,000 URLs. Multiple URLs can connect to the same “domain.” So the researchers also examined the domains that were most often the source of these connections. Nine of the top twenty domains behind these hidden connections are web services run by Google. Of the remaining eleven, three are owned or affiliated with Google. The other eight are Google competitors in behavioral futures markets, including Facebook, Samsung, and Scorecard Research, a data broker that sells surplus behavior to its customers. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2013
Categorization
- XREF: Direct measurable evidence for the behavioral surplus economy the whole book theorizes; connects to prediction-products chapter material. — connects to: Google institutionalized secrecy to sustain behavioral surplus extraction — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 279; Google’s ad-ranking innovation operationalized behavioral surplus as its core asset — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 239; Google’s auctions actually traded derivatives of behavioral surplus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 259 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Google institutionalized secrecy to sustain behavioral surplus extraction
#expands(0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 279 - Google’s ad-ranking innovation operationalized behavioral surplus as its core asset
#expands(0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 239 - Google’s auctions actually traded derivatives of behavioral surplus
#expands(0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 259 - Google’s success stems from radical social relations, not technological prowess alone
#complicates(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 69