The “Law of Google” is a metaphor for the phenomenon that certain corporations have acquired a role in the contemporary digital economy that turns them into more than private for-profit entities that are subject to regulatory demands by governments. To varying degrees they have become platforms, infrastructures, institutions, and even quasi-sovereigns. This seminar explores and critically interrogates the role of global digital corporations in contemporary global governance and their law-making, law-shaping, and law-implementing power. Relevant topics include the content moderation practices of social media platforms, the implementation of the right to be delisted (“right to be forgotten”) by search engine providers, the territorial limits of platform law and the (non)resolution of conflict of laws scenarios, the creation of quasi-adjudicatory bodies (such as Facebook’s Oversight Board), and novel approaches to platform regulation (such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act).
The seminar does not focus exclusively on Google and seeks to generate insights that will be useful for the legal analysis of global digital corporations more generally. Google will serve as the main case study due to its outsized role as the world’s dominant search engine and home of the world’s largest video platform (YouTube). The seminar will situate Google – and other global digital corporations – in contemporary data capitalism as theorized by thinkers such as Shoshana Zuboff (“surveillance capitalism”) and Julie Cohen (“informational capitalism”).
Naturally, the seminar cannot provide a comprehensive account of all legal domains relevant to the operation of global digital corporations as this would encompass everything from complex corporate governance over the law of the sea’s relevance for undersea fiberoptic cables to the intricate tax law questions raised by global digital corporations’ complex tax avoidance schemes. The seminar focuses mainly on global communication and information platforms and the ensuing legal and policy questions.
