Lucrative surveillance revenues deterred firms from inventing alternative market forms

Evidence

Similarly, under the conditions of surveillance exceptionalism, Google’s leaders were not compelled to undertake the arduous and risky work of inventing an exchange-based advocacy-oriented market form when the surveillance model was so lucrative. Why risk experimentation with more-organic paths to monetization when surveillance and extraction operations were safe from law and hugely profitable? Eventually, it wasn’t just Google asking these questions; every other internet business faced the same choices. Once surveillance revenues set the bar for venture capitalists and Wall Street analysts, it became that much easier for internet companies to go with the flow. Then it became onerous not to. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 387

Categorization

• XREF: The path-dependence argument — that early lucrative choices foreclose alternatives — echoes the Milgrom law-merchant work on how institutional equilibria get locked in. — connects to: Traditional industries like insurance now explicitly covet surveillance revenues modeled on Google — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 664