Since this post was written in 2011, Google's revenues have roughly tripled. In 2014, Google made $65.67B in revenues. In 2015, Google made 74.5B. In 2016, Google made 89.46B. For fiscal year 2017, Google reported revenues of $110.8 Billion. Now, it’s easy to say that number and smile and nod like we understand how much money it is, but I doubt any of us really appreciates the sheer enormity of what we’re talking about.
So, I thought it might be fun to try to illustrate exactly how much money Google makes.
Let’s Write It Out
This may sound obvious, but I think writing the number out is an important first step. The financial industry has a way of using shorthand to hide gigantic numbers. They can say things like “We only made $1B in profits last year!” with a straight face, as if they’re implying “C’mon, guys, it’s just a 1 (the smallest non-zero integer there is) followed by a ‘B’ (only the 2nd letter in the alphabet). It’s hardly anything!”
So, let’s write it out in all its glory, just to keep from fooling ourselves:
The color scheme has no significance – I just thought it was pretty. You can’t prove I didn’t.
$29B = 29 Taj Mahals
One of the most famous homes ever built, the Taj Mahal has ample living space at 500,000 square feet and 16 bathrooms. According to the internet, building your own Taj Mahal today would run you just over $1B US Dollars. Google could build 29 every year:
Even if Larry, Sergey, and Eric each have a summer and winter Taj Majal, that still leaves 23 for the rest of the staff to live in.
$29B = 17,000 Bugatti Veyrons
The most expensive production car of 2011, according to Forbes, is the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, coming in at a sticker price of just $1.7M. Google could drive 17,058 of these bad boys off of the lot, but let’s call it an even 17,000, after your trade-in and destination fees. This is a Bugatti Veyron (yeah, it’s pretty sweet):
The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is listed as 106.7 inches long. Parked end to end, 17,000 Bugattis would be roughly 150,000 feet or just shy of 29 miles of luxury car:
Somehow, that picture above just doesn’t do the number justice. Let’s say that we reduced each Bugatti to a 4x2-pixel red rectangle. Here’s what 17,000 of them would look like from space:
Go ahead, count them if you want. I’ll wait.
As of Q1 2010, Google employed 20,621 people full time, so each and every Google employee could be driving a Bugatti 9 months of the year, with just enough left over for gas.
$29B = 3.6B Justin Bieber Albums
If a Bugatti isn’t your style, maybe you’d like the latest Justin Bieber album, “Never Say Never” – it retails for $7.99 on iTunes. The cover looks something like this (the lightning bolts are magical Bieber aura):
If you were Google, you could buy a copy of the album for just 3,600,000,000 (3.6B) of your closest friends. I guess the other half of the Earth is out of luck…
Don’t worry, rest of Earth, there’s always next year. Google’s revenues jumped 27% in Q1 of 2011.
$29B = A Lot of Money
In summation, I leave you with one of my favorite clips from Spaceballs (PG-13). So, what does any of this mean for SEO? I’m no anti-Google conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that money talks, and $29,000,000,000 is a lot of conversations. Google is going to protect its interests, and we have to stop being surprised when they do.
Haha the funny thing is Google claimed they made a loss in the Australian market last financial year. Shows even though they make millions they have great accountants to back up the revenue and find ways to break down all the revenue into losses.
News story here -
https://www.smh.com.au/business/google-australias-real-strength-is-in-services-not-sales-20110501-1e2xm.html
But I love the images too, very creative =)
But why would they want to try and claim a loss if it wasn't true? Surely stock would suffer? - Jenni
Maybe they are basing their loss to what their income should be and didn't meet it so they considered it loss :d
Hahahahaha
No... They would post a loss in any market with high corporate tax, and have any profits they made transferred to another market with a lower tax threshold. (Normally where they have the holding company.) Common practice amongst multinational corporations.
The stock market wouldn't suffer necessarily suffer, as obviously they are beating expectations as a combined whole.
Ah right, thanks. - Jenni
Also any body who owns a company can "claim" a loss as you said but a big reason for this is like you said to avoid taxes but along with that google gets a tax brake as well for suffering a loss. I know a lot of people who do this actually just cuz they get a bigger tax return in the end
It is all relative and measured in Internet Dollars. LOL
Speaking of accountants...clearly neither you nor the writer of this article are accountants. Otherwise you would know there is a difference between revenue and profit. Revenue is what you make in sales. Profit is revenue less expenses. In 2010 google did have 29B in Revenue. By the same token they had 21B in expenses leaving them with 8M. For the same year Apple had over double the sales/revenue (65 B) and made a profit of 15B.
It's a thought exercise - I run my own business, and understand the difference between revenue and profit (not to mention cash-flow) all too well. I wanted people to try to contemplate the entire scope of the money involved, because it's far too easy to view it as an abstraction.
Abstract post so interesting, but a bit misleading - their top line in 2010 of $29B was income, not profit. In Google's case they are nicely profitable so their profit is in the billions as well - but it's an important distinction to make. Plenty of companies out there that have a hefty top line but still make a loss. Only about 29% of Google's revenue makes it to the profit line.
Thanks, I posted this above but apparently my comment is awaiting "moderation".
Glad someone pointed this out!
Again, this was an attempt visualize the total scope - I do understand and appreciate that Google can't actually spend $29B in any given year. The total flow of money to Google (from other businesses and individuals) is very real, though, and I think it has an incredible impact that we need to be mindful of (for good and evil, potentially). For me, I feel like keeping an eye on that is part of my job as a search industry analyst.
Good post just one slight niggle; the Taj Mahal doesn't have that much living space - it's a mausoleum.
Ho ho
and of course they notoriously cheat the UK taxpayer out of £100s of millions owed in corporate taxes on UK profits.
Is the 'good guy' mask now slipping far enough that there will be a real backlash from users? The open source community and pivacy campaigners have been vocal against them for a while, but I've been to 3 networking events this year where people have been speaking openly about the need for a credible alternative.
Not that I've yet moved any clients to Piwik analytics...
Backlash from users? I doubt it, as users are getting a great service without any direct costs. Backlash from advertisers who suspect Google is manipulating Adwords bidding? Maybe, but Google is the only game in town. Backlash from competitors? Hmmm, EEU and FTC are sniffing around.
Good point, Stream -- I heard about this: https://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201043146825.htm
Google's tax rate in the US is 2.4% because of some very fancy footwoork.
Great post Pete! I still can't wrap my head around that much money, I think you may need to convert that into terms I understand, such as how much candy I can buy! =)
I like Twix, so let's say a Twix bar (or pack of 2 bars) costs $0.89 each. You could buy 32.6B Twix bars. At 286 calories per pack, that would be 9 Trillion calories. You would gain approximately 2.6B pounds, assuming you didn't work out.
But if you bought that many Twix bars you would probably get a good discount, so it's closer to 50B !
Haha - yeah, I HOPE you'd get a discount. You'd probably destabilize global financial markets with a $29B candy purchase.
I wonder what the total candy production capacity of the world is. I think we should measure our global GDP in terms of it.
How many Goerge Costanzas is that?
Here it is... but in grams
1 480 763 628 grams of gummy bears (for instance)
Interesting post sir! Lol… as I am not much interested in to luxury properties I am still counting Bugattis :p just wait for me :)
I appreciate the randomness of this blog! Keeping us on our toes SEOMOZ. I like!
Dr Pete I love this.
I also love that strawberry space dust popping candy - apparently I can buy 67,666,666,666 packets of the stuff with $23b - which seems like an excellent investment.
I'd like to see a calculation of the storage volume that would require. :-)
Dr. Pete,
I know you were going for illustrations of money, but I still think the best way to grasp the enormity of a billion anything is to know that one million seconds is less than 12 days, but one billion seconds is more than 31 years. And $29 billion is a lot of dimp.
And I thought the youtube purchase for over a billion was a lot. Not really.
They could fly to the moon almost every day of the year.
https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/10/news/funny/moontrip/index.htm
Not really sure what this post adds, but hey, who am I to judge.
I liked the examples but you could have gotten more creative, eg - average length of a Bieber CD is 12cm, 3.6 billion CD's = 43200000000cm's.
Which means that is enough Bieber cd's to go around the Earth 10.79 times!
Sorry, but after this revelation I think I go to v...t :P
One thing we have to remember is that revenue does not equal net income (which I think is around $11bn for Google). So technically, they can spend the net income on buying all these things. Maybe the numbers in the post need to be rewritten? ;)
I think the interesting takeaway from your figures with the Bugatti calculation is that if the revenue's $29B and there are about 20k members of staff at Google, then each individual on average is responsible for about $1.5M revenue. Now those are some insane, scary numbers!
That's a great point, although Google does have a huge contingent of part-timers. They've been criticized for it off and on in the past, since part-time at big corporations typically = lower pay and no benefits.
It's clear, though, that Google is obsessed with automation, and nowhere is it more evident than AdWords. Even when I had a PPC client with a run-rate of nearly $1M/year, I virtually had to beg for a rep. Actually, I had to engage in a complex pattern of near harrassment, until I annoyed a VP into assigning me a rep (I'm not really exaggerating).
Meanwhile, GoDaddy used to call me when I had 10 domains registered and was hosting one of them for $3.99/month. I'm envious of Google's ability to have so little human involvement, but advertisers are getting sick of it, too.
The problem with huge organizations is that, no matter how big the margins, they always bloat to fill them. It's like buying a new house that's twice the size of your old house. Five year later, you'll have filled it with crap. I think that, someday, Google is going to find that they can't maintain this level of automation, but they'll have spent their margins on other projects that they can't easily undo.
Okay, here's one for you. Remember Duck Tales?
Uncle Scrooge would jump in his giant vault and swim around in his money... well, if $29B were to be in a vault, all in pennies, how big would that vault have to be?
Hehe
Very true, couldn't agree more.
I'm definitely feeling that with Google Places at the moment - I'm coming across tons of bugs and problems at Goog's end (affecting my clients), but their stance is that they seemingly can't - or won't - invest the time and resources with their employees handling these issues, instead expecting us to comment in the Help Forum, for either another user to help (they can't) or on the off-chance that an employee might see it?
Admittedly, Places free to sign up to, free to use and it's not like customers can/will go elsewhere if they're not happy, but still... I agree that they need to realise that they can't rely on automation as heavily as they currently do - plus, it's not like they couldn't afford to spare some resources in situations like these!
They have 13 digits in their account. I have currently have 11 in mine....unfortunately it's the first two that are missing :(
The Spaceballs quote is fantastic... great throw-in! LOL
Just a fun look at the "big G"! Nice one. Not that we all couldn't figure out that G has more money and value than god.. I think we all knew that, as we're stuck in the rat race of wanting to perform in it's index! :) We all made it rich !
I wish you added one more metric. That how many more people Google could hire, or how many homeless people they coudl shelter :)
Wow... 29 Billion dollars - I am freakin shocked.... Actually they could take it up to trillion in no time at all if they keep doing what they are doing.
I laughed at this. Great post.
I really liked how you mentioned $29.3 billion in the first paragraph and then when you wrote the number out you dropped the seemingly 'insignificant' $300,000,000 in revenue after the decimal. The number 1 company on the Inc. 5000 list for 2011 experinced a 3-year growth of 40,882% and THEY only had $77.7 million in revenue. According to us, they just got 'dropped'...almost four times.
Double that and you will see what Microsoft's revenue is like:
Amazing about Google. So if Microsoft did $62 Billion, how much was profit? And why isn't that the big news?
I was trying to find some reliable numbers on what Microsoft made from just search (i.e. Bing) in 2010, but they aren't particularly transparent about how that revenue gets split up. It's a bit more cut and dry with Google. Search advertising is something like $28B of the $29B, with $1B for "other". Search is, obviously, their bread, butter, and jam.
This post showing on Google knowledge graph for search term "how much does google make", thats awesome.
I have an money correction, an annual fee is about: 21,800,000,000
Great post! This is my first comment here on SEOMoz and I would like to thank for all the good information about SEO here. Hugs from Brazil!
Ok, now let's to the same exercise with my salary, guess it will be less impressive >_<
Wish Google would adopt me.. :D
Its Just awesome. I cannot say anything.
Dr. Pete - I got stuck in this article at your mention of the Taj Mahal. It's a tomb not a house and when I was there I don't remember seeing any ensuite bathrooms let alone 16 of them :-)
I'm confused.
Susan
Interesting post, except including Justin Bieber...
love this bro, interesting...and funny
Dr. Pete, thanks that was fun! Its also good to note that 27% up for Q1.
Interesting post. I've actually never thought about the specifics of how much Google makes. I always just assumed it was some astronomical number that I couldn't comprehend - and I was right! I particularly liked the 3.6B Justin Bieber Albums example. That *almost* puts it in perspective. ;) Hilarious.
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Love it dr Pete. We all work too much. Thanks.
:) Love the way you put it up! Well.. that's just a bit of money!
A bit is right when compared to the deficit. Still, when compared to the average corporate income in the US, that's some real change.
I love infographics... and a SEO infographic... that's just too good. It's been years since I've looked at Google's numbers...
Keep in mind that's only half of the US national budget deficit... and not even a dent on the debt.
Love the post, Pete. Wish it had one tiny detail. The percentage Google paid in taxes on all tha money. According to the stats I found when writing my post about why Google is dangerous, "Google pays income taxes of only 2.4% to the U.S. on their income; the average American company pays 28.3%".
I highly recommend checking out the source for additional details on how they avoid paying taxes by claiming most of their income is earned in Ireland by a tiny percentage of their workforce.
The taxes would be very interesting... especially as a percentage of the deficit. I'm guessing about 5% of the US deficit.
Here we go with the Justin Bieber CD's again Doc. I'm sensing a trend... secret fan maybe?
If Google makes this much on its own, how about the sum total thats made by all the companies that have generated business from advertising on the google platform. Google is certainly a force to be reckoned with.
The pixel representation is amazing. I know what to do with 17,000 Bugati, but I have no idea what to do with Justin Beiber's albums..lol
Nice post...enjoyed it..........beside mugging SEO and Panda!!
While we are at it - the Apple created App market has made $3 billion. Not bad at all for a market they created.
Apple seem to be able to cover a percentage of the population with itching powder, then sell them something to scratch that itch.
Jeremy.
Hail to the new catagory makers!!! Apple is doing what kiled Texas Instruments..powning a platform
Great post Pete. Really enjoyed reading it. :)
Nice read, just curious what happened to the Bugatti imge?
www.tineye.com seems to think it's based on https://www.swotbbs.com/customavatars/126716.jpg (or something similar).
I had this wild notion of doing line drawings of all of the objects I talked about, but it didn't pan out, so I took a photo of the Taj Mahal and cropped and stylized it. Once I did that, I applied the same effect to the other items in the post. It worked well for the small versions, but looked slightly odd for the larger ones. Mostly, I was just trying to give the post a consistent look and feel.
That number is so abstract that I even don't want this amount ... at least I guess so ;-)
I wonder how much comes from Adsense? A friend at Google (admittedly not in the finance department and I think in part to win an argument with me) said it was a super small percentage.
My girlfriend has a conspiracy theory that Norton creates viruses so that their AV product will be more popular. With Google, there's no conspiracy. Adsense creates spam.
that's an awful amount of cash !!! I like almonds. Anyone out there who wants to calculate how many almonds for me, please .. i'd be grateful. The question is: who will be the next google to make that fortune ?
I counted the rectangles. There are 12819, not 17000 :)
Ok, you scared me for a minute, but I count 212 rows of 80 (=16,960) + 1 row of 40 (16,960 + 40 = 17,000). Granted, I have the advantage of the Photoshop file.
Dr. Pete I think you just got trolled! :(
Great post, but 10 thumbs down?! People need to lighten up!
p.s. I don't believe there are even 17,000 Bugatti Veyrons in existence.
I literally woke up in the middle of the night last night wondering if I had counted the rectangles right. Yeah, I've got some issues :)
I admit that you probably don't want to take any of the numbers too seriously. Sadly, if iTunes did sell 3.6B copies of Justin Bieber's album, I bet the MPAA would still sue the 11 people who pirated copies.
Proving you can do infographics without a designer :-) Fun post.
Great post Pete, that car is awesome!, it will be interesting to compare Google revenue to other companies within the industry and outside... like Google vs. Yahoo (ok, bad example, maybe vs. facebook), how about Google vs. Wallmart? maybe that way we can predict how close they are to take over the world... :)
Very Good post. Great diagrams!
Well done!
Well Dr. Pete, I'm glad you wrote this post exactly the way you did! You have nothing to apologize for. It was insightful and funny. And having a sense of humor in one's writing is a good thing, not a bad one.
Edit -- Pete one of the things I have learned to look forward to in your posts is the humor you use. I will miss it if it goes away. Don't let a few detractors influence your writing style. Or, what you chose to write about. We can all be serious around here and still enjoy a good laugh. :-)
Very funny and intersting post in same time. I can't even imagine these numbers menioned here. Maybe one day I could afford at least one Taj Mahal for myself? $29M are really great numbers, and in this years they will probably go higher. Google is constantly in search for new markets.Even in my little country with 4M population and economy in big economical crisis, Google is doing great job measured in millions of US dollars. Yes, that is Google.
(Billion, not Million).
And they don't have the Russian market locked--let the panic ensue!
Man this post is hilarious!! Love the 29 billion with all the zeros as google colors.
They could build a monster campaign in AdWords!
It is scary sometimes how much money Google makes.
Now that would be a sweet sight... Google liquifies the assets and treats all their employees to new Bugattis. I can just picture 'em all lined up :) Time to go fill out a job app!!
Sorry man, I was the second peron to give a thumbs down. I read the post and it has nothing to do with SEO or web strategy. I'm sure I'll get many thumbs down for this comment!
I appreciate the honest feedback. I felt this was relevant to the SEO industry as a whole, as I think we overlook just how much money flows around us (especially given how much of it is ours). I'm not sure we really grasp the implications (myself included) most days. Obviously, the response has been lackluster, so I'll bear that in mind going forward. Sometimes, you just have to try something new and see what happens.
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy.......
I disagree - I think this post is completely relevant to both web strategy and SEO.
Google generated $29B in revenue in 2010 and experienced 27% growth in 2011. If you overlay what product and infrastructure adjustments Google has done in the last 12 months (Caffeine, Mayday, Brands, Instant, Panda, etc.) against the return from those adjustments - the results are unbelievable... especially in an industry like search.
The POINT? They are making rapid changes to what is perceived as a simple to use mutliple times a day product and it's leading to substantial growth in a mature industry.
This post highlights, in laymens terms how much they are actually making off of helping people find out "how to tie a tie?" and the likes there of. If you know how much they make - you know how much they want to protect it and how much MORE they want to make. Their Strategy is working...damn good.
As an SEO your job is to understand who you are dealing with and anticipate their next move as if you are playing poker. You can't form your own strategy unless you understand what forms your oponents strategy. As an SEO - you've got to consider the Google Algorithm as a partial opponent.
Where I struggle is - is that most SEO's, blogs, conferences, etc... tend to express their frustration and distrust of Google. We/They call them hypocrites, focused on what's best for Google - not playing fair, etc... When I truly consider how much they are worth, and the assumed pressure they are under as a public company to beat each quarter/year, etc... I can't help but ask myself, if you really want to drive PPC Spend and revenue, why wouldn't they rollout an organic adjustment that impacted the ORGANIC rankings for those that are the most visible (naturally) on Google - BIG BRANDS. If BIG BRANDS lose their organic rankings they would be forced to pay more in PPC.
Maybe they truly do believe in the mantra "Don't be evil." Either way - what they have been doing is working, so we can all expect to see more adjustments and need to be prepared for such.
Cheers Dr. Pete.
Great summary of the "This post highlights, in laymens terms how much they are actually making off of helping people find out "how to tie a tie?" " !
You reply was longer than Dr. Pete's post. I also think your post sounds like it could be more relevant at what Dr. Pete was trying to portrait. See everyone at MozCon!
Yes the post has nothing to do with seo but it's not bad. It dosen't have to be all hard work and no funn.
revenue != profit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google
Revenue US$ 29.321 billion (2010)
Operating income US$ 10.381 billion (2010)
Profit US$8.505 billion (2010)
I'll be brutally honest, I've followed the SEOmoz blog religiously for the past few years and am very grateful for everything I have learnt, it has proven invaluable.
Recently though I have noticed a trend for increased volume in exchange for decreased quality, a lot of the times it feels like they're willing to sacrifice some of the SEOmoz karma in exchange for content (UGC).
As an example I now have over 15 unread SEOmoz articles in my reader, just because I can't bring myself to trawl through the fluff looking for the nuggets of valuable information.
I'm unsure if they're trying to appeal to a wider audience beyond us SEO nerds, or have simply run out of things to write about?
Please bring back the strict editorial guidelines that I'm convinced were previously in place.
(I apologize if this comes across as a bit of a rant, but as an entrepreneur I admire SEOmoz enormously and it's a little unsettling to see them veering off their original course).
*EDIT: If you are interested in Google you should read: (I started two days ago and am hooked)
In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives [Hardcover] - Steven Levy (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Plex-Google-Thinks-Works-Shapes/dp/1416596585
Sorry, the links triggered a filter - we're certainly open to criticism (as am I, personally).
I fully understand this was revenue, and not profit - it was meant as an object lesson, to illustrate just how much money search generates, and what that really means. I think it's important to watch the money, because I honestly believe money and power can corrupt, if we're not careful. I thought this was an interesting (if unusual) angle on the issue that could be educational to the community, but obviously some didn't, so I'll consider that feedback going forwrad.
Hey Dr Pete!
Thanks for the honest reply, apoligize for the tone on my original comment! I've happily read and enjoyed many of your articles in the past both here elsewhere, but I just felt this was not #mozworthy and felt I had to point it out ;-)
It's just a bit of fun. If everything was all serious and techie all the time, it would be all work and no play.
Look at the number of comments, share, tweets, likes, etc... That shows that people find this post interesting. Which is the point isn't it?
As the saying goes, "You can please some of the people, some of the time, but you can't please all of the people, all of the time".
Im with you that there are have been some posts lately that could have done with brevity. This is a bit different tho. I also get a bit frustrated at the number of linkbuilding posts or posts that say nothing new, but this was an interesting angle
I must respectfully disagree.
I was just discussing 5 SEO blogs/sites that are widely respected and the general feeling from that conversation was that SEOmoz consistently publishes the most cutting-edge, useful, and interesting search related information on the web.
Haha I agree! SEOmoz does have the best stuff.
Im definitely not saying "OMG its all crap" but SOEmoz talks to a wide audience and you cant keep all the people happy all the time
I think SEOmoz provides a valuable service to us all, as youmoz writers as much as readers, so Im genreally ok with linkbuilding posts as they give SEOs of all levels an opportunity to contribute to the community. But am hoping people could edit their posts a bit, its a vital communication skill
hmm what about SEOmoz = Google ???? :p
The estimated cost of building a Taj Mahal today should be in trillion dollars (1000 billion dollars). It is a no brainer becuase there are many hotels and mansions which are worth $1 billion and more. Mukesh Ambani's (a business tycoon in India) house itself is worth $2 billion according to Forbes. So I don't think Google can afford even 1 Taj Mahal let alone 29. I really don't care how much Google makes. But i do like their 5 star offices and the super duper awesome perks they provide to their employees. It is one of the best place to work in.
Google make $29.9 Billion. That's fact. Google is god for many website owners. It creates very huge platform to do online business. All website owners are making money with help of Google. (Basically with help of organic search) Google is earning too much but also give facilities to earn money.
If any local store trasfer in to website & will get top ranking in organic results so that local store owner will start earn money.
Google was great, is great and will great... :)