The power of digital platforms is at the center of major ongoing policy and regulatory efforts. To advance existing debates, we designed and executed an experiment to measure the power of online search providers, building on the recent definition of performative power. Instantiated in our setting, performative power quantifies the ability of a search engine to steer web traffic by rearranging results. To operationalize this definition we developed a browser extension that performs unassuming randomized experiments in the background. These randomized experiments emulate updates to the search algorithm and identify the causal effect of different content arrangements on clicks. We formally relate these causal effects to performative power. Analyzing tens of thousands of clicks, we discuss what our robust quantitative findings say about the power of online search engines. More broadly, we envision our work to serve as a blueprint for how performative power and online experiments can be integrated with future investigations into the economic power of digital platforms.

翻译：数字平台的权力是当前主要政策与监管努力的核心议题。为推进现有讨论，我们基于近期提出的表演性权力定义，设计并实施了一项衡量在线搜索提供商权力的实验。在我们的设定中，表演性权力具体量化了搜索引擎通过重新排列搜索结果来引导网络流量的能力。为实现该定义的可操作化，我们开发了一款浏览器扩展程序，可在后台执行非干预性随机实验。这些随机实验模拟搜索算法的更新，并识别不同内容排列对点击行为的因果效应。我们正式建立了这些因果效应与表演性权力之间的理论关联。通过分析数万次点击数据，我们讨论了这些稳健的量化发现对在线搜索引擎权力的启示。更广泛而言，我们期望本研究能为如何将表演性权力与在线实验相结合，为未来数字平台经济权力的研究提供方法论蓝图。