The complementor perspective: examining how Dutch developers and industry professionals navigated Google Assistant as a platform (2018-2021)

Katerina Mniestri and Thomas Poell

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This article examines the process of platformization from the perspective of platform complementors. It focusses on Dutch complementors—retailers, news organizations, transportation companies, and software start-ups—that developed Conversational Actions for Google Assistant. The analysis builds on a combination of digital fieldwork and interviews with Dutch developers, conversational specialists, and marketing and communication managers between 2018 and 2021. Pushing back against the dominant focus on successful platforms, we demonstrate that platformization needs to be understood as a balancing act, marked by frictions that arise in attempts to align expectations, interests, concerns, and objectives of different actors. Our findings show that complementors’ imaginaries of a Dutch assistant conflicted with Google’s global priorities, revealing the limits of localization in platform infrastructures. Moreover, we highlight the asymmetry between complementors’ expectation of a linear platform development and Google’s circular strategy of continuous reconfiguration of infrastructures and platforms to capture specific markets.

Keywords: boundary resources; Google Assistant; platform failure; platformization; platforms; sociotechnical imaginaries; virtual assistants; Boundary resources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 L81 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2026-02-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
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Published in New Media & Society, 26, February, 2026. ISSN: 1461-4448

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:131069

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