The national roots of a multinational. Google’s recruitment and adaptation to the field of French power (2002-2012)

While the power of multinationals, and of the GAFAMs in particular, appears to be one of the major political and economic facts of our time, is it exercised without friction in the national spheres of power that they encounter as they internationalize? This article sets out to answer this question by analysing Google’s presence in France through the lens of its recruitment. Based on interviews, archives and a prosopographical analysis, the inquiry shows a digital multinational’s efforts to adapt to and penetrate the French market, at a time when it was immediately the target of hostile protests and framed as a political problem. The article analyses this process of adaptation, which involved recruiting employees and managers with hybrid profiles, located at the interface between Google and the purview of state power. The national roots of these recruits in general, and of the representatives of interests in particular, created arenas of negotiation in which the firm’s entry into government work, and the recognition of its legitimacy to engage in certain sectors of public policy, played out.