Behind the Search Box

Google and the Global Internet Industry
Author: ShinJoung Yeo
A much-needed analysis of the search industry and its foremost player
Cloth – $110
978-0-252-04499-1
Paper – $28
978-0-252-08712-7
eBook – $19.95
978-0-252-05417-4
Publication Date
Paperback: 04/18/2023
Cloth: 04/18/2023
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About the Book

Once seen as a harbinger of a new enlightened capitalism, Google has become a model of robber baron rapaciousness thanks to its ruthless monetizing of private data, obsession with monopoly, and pervasive systems of labor discrimination and exploitation. Using the company as a jumping-off point, ShinJoung Yeo explores the political economy of the search engine industry against the backdrop of the relationship between information and capitalism’s developmental processes. Yeo’s critical analysis draws on in-depth discussions of essential issues like how the search engine evolved into a ubiquitous commercial service, its place in a global information business that is restructuring the information industry and our very social lives, who exactly designs and uses search technology, what kinds of workers labor behind the scenes, and the influence of geopolitics.

An incisive look at a pervasive presence in our lives, Behind the Search Box places the search engine industry’s rise and ongoing success within an original political economy of digital capitalism.

About the Author

ShinJoung Yeo is an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College, City University of New York.

Reviews


Blurbs

“The book reminds readers that despite all the various new labels of supposedly new forms of capitalism, we really are still talking about capitalism after all. An important book that promises to make a major contribution to the ever-accumulating research on the new digital monopolies. Yeo’s analysis is original and incisive.”--Victor Pickard, author of Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society