Course convenor: Dr Jean-Christhope Plantin

While GAFAM companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) are still studied as digital platforms, they now constitute major operators of the internet infrastructure, as witnessed by their involvement since 2010 in four sectors: data centers, undersea cables, telecommunications networks, and satellites. This course will study this radical extension of platform power on the internet architecture, uses, and governance. It will demonstrate how GAFAM companies become dominant actors in these four infrastructure sectors by using the platform strategy that granted them their initial success, and by adapting it from the web economy to infrastructure management.