{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title":"State Platform Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781009619714","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","uuid":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title":"State Platform Capitalism","normalized_title":"stateplatformcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781009619714","isbns":["9781009619714","9781009446594","9781009446587"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":98,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/State%20Platform%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/search"},"page":{"printed_page":18,"pdf_page":23,"physical_index":23,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b7f1d9b0fd589e8e726900e1d09aef9510618577c11eacf9f2ab37c8906c4416"},"chapter":"Cambridge Elements","content":"Platform power is predicated upon the capability to integrate technology ‘stacks’: assemblages of global-scale computational hardware and software. Digital platforms constitute a user-friendly interface for efficiently navigating this subterranean ‘infrastructural complex of server farms, massive databases, energy sources, optical cables, wireless transmission media, and distributed applications’ (Bratton, 2016, 70). While this assemblage of devices and software is intrinsically open (‘the open web’), platforms seek to wall off access to sections of these stacks using technical barriers, IP law, restricted access to APIs, and algorithmic filtering and curation. They monopolize the ‘walled gardens’ they create in a way that was impossible with the open internet (Plantin and De Seta, 2019; Peck and Phillips, 2021). In this way, platform competition is distinct from typical competition in lines for specific products or services. For Jacobides (2019), ‘in a growing number of sectors, the firm and even the industry have ceased to be meaningful units of strategic analysis. We must focus instead on competition between digitally-enabled designed ecosystems that span traditional industry boundaries and offer complex and customisable product-service bundles’.\n\nLike earlier vertically integrated corporations, platforms aim to minimize transaction costs and exercise market dominance. Yet, they differ markedly in some ways. Rather than employing vertical integrated command structures (Chandler Jr, 1977), they instead operate by organizing market interactions digitally, and exerting control through ecosystem governance via ‘terms of service’ commands rather than managerial hierarchies. The power to orchestrate and govern without owning represents a powerful evolution of corporate control strategies (Grabher, 2025).\n\nThe extreme corporate concentration and financial dominance of giant platform firms is represented by a distinctive economic geography with two main poles (Kenney and Zysman, 2020). The United States dominates, with the combined value of the so-called ‘magnificent seven’ technology firms (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Tesla) representing about a third of US stock market value as of May 2025. China represents another pole of digital power in the global political economy (Figure 1). The platforms domiciled in both these countries have immense extraterritorial power, given they exercise considerable control over most of the world’s technology stacks (Mayer and Lu, 2025)\n\n18\n\nReinventing Capitalism","previous_page":17,"next_page":19}