The fourth type is that of product platforms (e.g. GE, Siemens), which build the hardware and software necessary to transform traditional manufacturing into internet-connected processes that lower the costs of production and transform goods into services.
The third type is that of industrial platforms (e.g. AWS, Salesforce), which own the hardware and software of digital-dependent businesses and are renting them out as needed. The second type is that of cloud platforms (e.g. Google, Facebook), which extract information on users, undertake a labour of analysis, and then use the products of that process to sell ad space. “The first type is that of advertising platforms (e.g. For the most part, the strategy has been to collect data, then apologise and roll back programs if there is an uproar, rather than consulting with users beforehand.16 This is why we will continue to see frequent uproars over the collection of data by these companies.” This tendency involves constantly pressing against the limits of what is socially and legally acceptable in terms of data collection. Importantly, ‘once we understand this, it becomes clear that demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists or lobbying for an end to commercial surveillance on the Internet is like asking Henry Ford to make each Model T by hand’.15 Calls for privacy miss how the suppression of privacy is at the heart of this business model. These are not asset-less companies – far from it they spend billions of dollars to purchase fixed capital and take other companies over.
This book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the most powerful tech companies of our time are transforming the global economy.“The fact that the information platform requires an extension of sensors means that it is countering the tendency towards a lean platform. It shows how the fundamental foundations of the economy are rapidly being carved up among a small number of monopolistic platforms, and how the platform introduces new tendencies within capitalism that pose significant challenges to any vision of a post-capitalist future. This book critically examines these new business forms, tracing their genesis from the long downturn of the 1970s to the boom and bust of the 1990s and the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of 'platform capitalism'.
What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on.
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