Platform capitalism and cloud infrastructure: Theorizing a hyper-scalable computing regime

Abstract

There has been an explosion of scholarship on platform capitalism, with scholars identifying emergent labor practices, organizational forms, and business models. There is broad agreement that successful platform companies quickly dominate their markets, and winner-takes-all scenarios are common. However, market domination should not only be viewed as a condition but also as a process that is defined by specific drivers and practices. With regard to rapid expansion, much is said about network effects and data-intensive business models that are fueled by speculative logics as well as weak regulatory mechanisms. 1 advance the discussion on expansion and hyper-scalability by focusing on the transformation in underlying computing arrangements that shape the growth of platform-based companies. This article establishes cloud computing arrangements as setting the foundational sociotechnical infrastructure that drives rapid expansion.

Towards a political economy of technical systems: The case of Google

“…Further expansion through new products or by renting cloud capacities to third parties becomes attractive because investments in hardware, data center management, and key backend technologies like MapReduce are spread over always larger pools of projects. The consequence is a “global restructuring in the composition, organization, and consumption of computing assets” (Narayan, 2022) around a small number of actors that can satisfy increasing demands for flexibility and scalability.…”

Monopolization and competition under platform capitalism: Analyzing transformations in the computing industry

“…The monopolistic thrust of the platform economy (Kenney and Zysman, 2016) is now well discussed, with the new behemoths—Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook—coming under increasing scrutiny. Many argue that the source of their corporate power emanates from their control of an increasingly critical infrastructure: digital platforms (Cole, 2022; Narayan, 2022a). These mega-firms, due to their ownership of key infrastructures, are now be regarded as the “landlords of the internet” (Sadowski, 2020).…”

“…The strength of critical platform studies lies in the ability to combine economic and organizational analysis with temporal, spatial, and labor-related dimensions of platform ecosystems using a processual approach. Indeed, platform studies scholars discuss “platformization” as a process that has a transformative impact on existing social relations (Gerlitz et al, 2019; Mackenzie, 2019; Plantin et al, 2018; Narayan, 2022a), while acknowledging that these platforms are built on, and sit within, socio-historical scaffolds.…”

(Infra)structural Discontinuity: Capital, Labour, and Technological Change

“…2021), digital value networks (Howson et al. forthcoming), and cloud infrastructure (Narayan 2022), among others. However, questions specifically focused on technological and institutional change have been largely abandoned by the discipline (Webber [1987] was the last piece on technological change in this journal), even with regard to Marxist theories of régulation (see, for example, Herod 2018; Peck and Tickell 2012).…”

“…The extent and nature of such change remains an open debate fragmented across disciplines. Critical geographers have engaged with themes related to digitalisation (Fuchs 2020), the platformisation of work (Sadowski 2020;van Doorn et al 2021), digital value networks (Howson et al forthcoming), and cloud infrastructure (Narayan 2022), among others. However, questions specifically focused on technological and institutional change have been largely abandoned by the discipline (Webber [1987] was the last piece on technological change in this journal), even with regard to Marxist theories of r egulation (see, for example, Herod 2018; Peck and Tickell 2012).…”