By applying the logic of a two-sided market, Google as an information infrastructure has harnessed the collective mind of web users to serve an efficient business model. Contrary to classic knowledge classification models, access to information on Google is in “natural language.” This effectively relegates all the intermediate labor involved in the production of results to the backroom recesses of computer functions, with an outward appearance of neutrality. We show, however, that this belies a sustained effort to order the world in accordance with the program of action dictated by the search engine, with the actions of those seeking to intervene in the program and with the development of experimental counter-models.
Keywords
- referencing
- ranking
- two-sided market
- semantic web