In a digital economy which is increasingly becoming an information and attention-based economy, search engines are occupying a central role shaped by the symbolic status of Google both in terms of its renown and its dominance of internet traffic. Despite their importance, economic models and competition structures for search engines are not widely understood. Thanks to their top-heavy IT infrastructures, they come under the network economy. And because they supply service applications, they can also be classified as part of the content economy. Google's disruptive success is down to the very fact that it has been able to innovate in the technical, service, use and business model spheres, all at the same time
