On the Political Economy of Link-based Web Search

Abstract

Web search engines arguably form the most popular data-driven systems in contemporary society. They wield a considerable power by functioning as gatekeepers of the Web. Since the late 1990s, search engines have been dominated by the paradigm of link-based web search. In this paper, we critically analyse the Political Economy of the paradigm of link-based web search, drawing upon insights and methodologies from Critical Political Economy. We illustrate how link-based web search has led to phenomena that favour capital through long-term structural changes on the Web, and how it has led to accentuating unpaid digital labour and ecologically unsustainable practices, among several others. We show how con-temporary observations on the degrading quality of link-based web search can be traced back to the internal contradictions with the paradigm, and how such socio-technical phenom-ena may lead to an eventual disutility of the link-based model. Our contribution is on enhanc-ing the understanding of the Political Economy of link-based web search, and laying bare the phenomena at work, towards catalysing the search for alternative models of content organi-sation and search on the Web.