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

Résumé :

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.