Traditionally, monopolies on goods and services disfigure markets by unfairly eliminating competition in order to raise prices at will. Under surveillance capitalism, however, many of the practices defined as monopolistic actually function as means of cornering user-derived raw-material supplies. There is no monetary price for the user to pay, only an opportunity for the company to extract data. Cornering practices are not designed to protect product niches but rather to protect critical supply routes for the unregulated commodity that is behavioral surplus. In another time, rogue market actors might corner markets in copper or magnesium, but in our time it is behavioral surplus. The corporation unfairly impedes competitors in Search in order to protect the dominance of its most important supply route, not primarily to fix prices.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 419