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Zusammenfassung:In diesem Aufsatz, der auf einer systematischen Auswertung von Geschäftsberichten, Dokumenten, verfügbarem empirischem Material, Literatur und Presseberichten basiert, werden die Konzentrationsprozesse, Expansionsund Innovationsstrategien der fünf führenden Internetkonzerne Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon und Microsoft analysiert. Die Befunde, die der Text vorstellt, sind von einer Dezentralisierung der Markt-und Demokratisierung der Innovationsprozesse im Web ebenso weit entfernt wie von Vorstellungen einer vornehmlich offenen und kollaborativ betriebenen Technik-und Produktentwicklung. Die fünf untersuchten Konzerne prägen nicht nur wesentliche Angebote und Märkte des Internets. Sie regeln als Betreiber der zentralen Infrastrukturen auch die Zugänge zum Netz, strukturieren die Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten der Nutzer und sind wesentliche Treiber des Innovationsprozesses. Nicht Dezentralisierung, Demokratisierung und Kooperation, sondern Konzentration, Kontrolle und Macht sind, so die These, die Schlüsselprozesse und -kategorien, mit denen sich die wesentlichen Entwicklungstendenzen des (kommerziellen) Internets angemessen erfassen lassen.Schlüsselwörter: Internetkonzerne · Internetmärkte · Marktkonzentration · Akquisitionen · Konkurrenz · Innovation · Forschung und Entwicklung 2 U. Dolata 3The volatile power of the big internet companies. Market concentration, competition and innovation strategies Abstract: Based on a systematic review and evaluation of business reports, documents, statistics, literature and press releases, this paper analyzes the market concentration and the expansion and innovation strategies of the five leading internet corporations Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. The findings invalidate any claims that a decentralization of the market and a democratization of the Internet is taking place, or that research, development and innovation processes are becoming more open and collaborative. The five examined corporations, as the operators of the core infrastructures of the worldwide web, shape the overall products and services offer of the Internet, determine access to the web, structure the communication possibilities for users, and are the main drivers of innovation in this field. Not decentralization, democratization and open innovation, but market concentration, control and power struggles are categories to adequately describe the fundamental dynamics of the Internet.

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Over the course of the 2010s, the leading Internet groups, with their extensively interconnected platforms, have become the key players in the design and regulatory framing of the Internet. This paper examines the mechanisms by which they fulfil their role as structure-building, rule-making and action-coordinating core actors in today's Web. The focus is on two essential regulatory areas: on the one hand, the private-sector organization and regulation of markets, in which they themselves, as platform operators, coordinate market processes and determine the conditions of competition; on the other hand, the technically mediated structuration and curation of social relationships and social behavior, through which the platform operators assume far-reaching regulatory functions. The few large platforms that today enable and coordinate large parts of private and public life on the Internet can -according to the thesis of this article -be understood as differentiated societal structures with a distinct institutional basis, which the platform operators shape and control to a considerable extent by means of their own rules, regulations and coordination bodies. This goes as far as the companies -which so far have been largely able to elude democratic legitimation and control -taking over quasi-sovereign tasks previously reserved for state authorities.

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