In From Online Platforms to Digital Monopolies: Technology, Information and Power, Jonas C L Valente discusses the rise of platforms as key players in deferments social activities, from economy to culture and politics and how they are becoming digital monopolies.

Through three case studies, this book investigates whether digital industries are naturally monopolistic and evaluates policy approaches to market power.

What do Google, Snapchat, Tinder, Amazon, and Uber have in common, besides soaring market share? They're platforms - a new business model that has quietly become the only game in town, creating vast fortunes for its founders while dominating everyone's daily life. A platform, by definition, creates value by facilitating an exchange between two or more interdependent groups. So, rather that making things, they simply connect people. The Internet today is awash in platforms - Facebook is responsible for nearly 25 percent of total Web visits, and the Google platform crash in 2013 took about 40 percent of Internet traffic with it. Representing the ten most trafficked sites in the U.S., platforms are also prominent over the globe; in China, they hold the top eight spots in web traffic rankings. The advent of mobile computing and its ubiquitous connectivity have forever altered how we interact with each other, melding the digital and physical worlds and blurring distinctions between "offline" and "online." These platform giants are expanding their influence from the digital world to the whole economy. Yet, few people truly grasp the radical structural shifts of the last ten years. In Modern Monopolies, Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson tell the definitive story of what has changed, what it means for businesses today, and how managers, entrepreneurs, and business owners can adapt and thrive in this new era.

As outrage over the socially damaging practices of technology companies intensifies, this book asks what it actually means to hold a 'monopoly' in the tech world and offers an in-depth analysis of how these corporate giants are produced, financialized, and regulated.

Why there is no such thing as a free audience in today's attention economy The internet was supposed to fragment audiences and make media monopolies impossible. Instead, behemoths like Google and Facebook now dominate the time we spend online—and grab all the profits. This provocative and timely book sheds light on the stunning rise of the digital giants and the online struggles of nearly everyone else, and reveals what small players can do to survive in a game that is rigged against them. Challenging some of the most enduring myths of digital life, Matthew Hindman explains why net neutrality alone is no guarantee of an open internet, and demonstrates what it really takes to grow a digital audience in today's competitive online economy.

In our digital age, online companies such as Google and Amazon are experiencing tremendous growth. The power and influence of these digital companies was demonstrated in September 2017 when Amazon bought the popular organic grocery Whole Foods for a record 13 million dollars. Do companies such as Amazon have too much influence in the digital space? Should they be broken up to allow more competition? In this book, these questions and more are considered by a range of experts in the subject, from legal experts, to CEOs, to corporate players, and journalists.

We once thought of cyberspace as a borderless world. As the internet has become increasingly platformized, with a small number of technology giants that dominate the global digital economy, concerns about information monopolies, hateful online content, and the impact on media content creators and creative industries have become more marked. Consequently governments, politicians, and civil society are questioning how digital platforms can or should be regulated. In this up-to-the-minute study, Terry Flew engages with important questions surrounding platform regulation. Starting from the premise that governance is an inherent feature of digital platforms, he argues that the challenge is to develop the best frameworks for balancing external regulatory oversight with the internal governance practices of platform companies. The intersection of media policy, information policy, and economic policy is an important element of policy frameworks, as national authorities increasingly seek to engage with the power of global digital platforms. Lively and accessible, Regulating Platforms is a go-to text for students and scholars of media and communication.