Google’s Advertising and Capital

Google has been studied by scholars as exemplifying the contemporary conjuncture of “big tech” and capitalism. Zuboff, Varoufakis, and Durand argue that companies such as Google mark an end to capitalism as we know it. A different group of scholars—Fuchs, Harvey, Srnicek, Foster, McChesney, Lebowitz, Kangal, Reveley, and Huato—see Google as a capitalist firm, but have major disagreements about its role within capitalism. This problem may be addressed by assessing Google within Marx’s typology of capital. Various forms of evidence are relevant in this regard: financial statements, legislative inquiries, Google’s service pages, and supporting material. This evidence may be used to assess Google's revenue and model the forms of exchange that the company mediates in the digital advertising market. When assessed thus, Google is shown to be an example of merchant capital, a genus of capital in Marx’s typology that mediates exchange in the sphere of circulation. To fully account for the case of Google, however, Marx’s framework must be expanded to include media-marketing capital as a hybrid species of merchant capital.