Locked in a data imperative? French local businesses faced with Google Maps

Antoine Courmont
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Antoine Courmont: Université Gustave Eiffel, CNRS, ENPC-Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Laboratoire Techniques Territoires Sociétés, France

Urban Studies, 2025, vol. 62, issue 13, 2687-2705

Abstract: This article examines how Google Maps is reshaping local markets by imposing a data imperative on businesses, compelling them to continuously produce and update data to maintain their visibility and competitiveness. Using France as a case study, it conceptualizes Google Maps as an ordinal device: a ranking mechanism that classifies and orders businesses based on data-driven metrics rather than traditional market dynamics. The findings reveal how Google Maps fosters new forms of competition, where business success is increasingly determined by algorithmic valuation and digital reputation. This process transforms market hierarchies, embedding merchants into a self-reinforcing cycle of data accumulation that strengthens Google’s informational dominance. By framing data capital as a key determinant of visibility in platform-mediated markets, this article contributes to debates on digital capitalism and spatial inequalities, highlighting how platform infrastructures reorganize economic life at the local level.

Keywords: Google Maps; data capital; data capital; ordinal device; spatial inequalities; 谷歌地图; æœ¬åœ°ä¼ ä¸š; æ•°æ ®èµ„æœ¬; æŽ’åº æœºåˆ¶; ç©ºé—´ä¸ å¹³ç­‰ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:62:y:2025:i:13:p:2687-2705

DOI: 10.1177/00420980251355479

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