Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. Forty-six percent of this profit was from clicks (cost per clicks), amounting to US$109,652 million in 2017.
This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob, AdSense (such as AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, etc.) and DoubleClick AdExchange. In addition to its own algorithms for understanding search requests, Google uses technology from its acquisition of DoubleClick, to project user interest and target advertising to the search context and the user history. In 2007, Google launched “AdSense for Mobile”, taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.
Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through a cost-per-click scheme.
The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid.
Google Search Console (rebranded from Google Webmaster Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the sitemap, crawl rate, and for security issues of their websites, as well as optimize their website’s visibility. Google had previously used virtual assistants and chatbots, such as Google Bard, prior to the announcement of Gemini in March 2024. None of them, however, had been seen as legitimate competitors to ChatGPT, unlike Gemini. An artificial intelligence training program for Google employees was also introduced in April 2024.
Google has also created the text-to-image model Imagen, and the text-to-video model Veo. In 2023, Google released NotebookLM, an online tool for synthesizing documents using Gemini. In September 2024, it gained attention for its “Audio Overview” feature, which generates podcast-like summaries of documents. Google offers Gmail for email, Google Calendar for time-management and scheduling.
Google Maps and Google Earth for mapping, navigation and satellite imagery Google Drive for cloud storage of files, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides for productivity, Google Photos for photo storage and sharing, Google Keep for note-taking, Google Translate for language translation, YouTube for video viewing and sharing, Google My Business for managing public business information,and Duo for social interaction.
A job search product has also existed since before 2017, Google for Jobs is an enhanced search feature that aggregates listings from job boards and career sites. Google Earth, launched in 2005, allows users to see high-definition satellite pictures from all over the world for free through a client software downloaded to their computers. Google develops the Android mobile operating system, as well as its smartwatch, television, car, and Internet of things-enabled smart devices variations. It also develops the Google Chrome web browser, and ChromeOS, an operating system based on Chrome.
In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own brand. It spawned a number of phones and tablets under the “Nexus” branding until its eventual discontinuation in 2016, replaced by a new brand called Pixel. In 2011, the Chromebook was introduced, which runs on ChromeOS. In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, which allows users to stream content from their smartphones to televisions.
In June 2014, Google announced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that lets the user place their smartphone in a special front compartment to view virtual reality (VR) media. In October 2016, Google announced Daydream View, a lightweight VR viewer which lets the user place their smartphone in the front hinge to view VR media.
Other hardware products include:
- Nest, a series of voice assistant smart speakers that can answer voice queries, play music, find information from apps (calendar, weather etc.), and control third-party smart home appliances (users can tell it to turn on the lights, for example). The Google Nest line includes the original Google Home (later succeeded by the Nest Audio), the Google Home Mini (later succeeded by the Nest Mini), the Google Home Max, the Google Home Hub (later rebranded as the Nest Hub), and the Nest Hub Max.
- Nest Wifi (originally Google Wifi), a connected set of Wi-Fi routers to simplify and extend coverage of home Wi-Fi.
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite until October 2020) is a monthly subscription offering for organizations and businesses to get access to a collection of Google’s services, including Gmail, Google Drive and Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides, with additional administrative tools, unique domain names, and 24/7 support.
On September 24, 2012, Google launched Google for Entrepreneurs, a largely not-for-profit business incubator providing startups with co-working spaces known as Campuses, with assistance to startup founders that may include workshops, conferences, and mentorships. Presently, there are seven Campus locations: Berlin, London, Madrid, Seoul, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw.
On March 15, 2016, Google announced the introduction of Google Analytics 360 Suite, “a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers” which can be integrated with BigQuery on the Google Cloud Platform. Among other things, the suite is designed to help “enterprise class marketers” “see the complete customer journey”, generate “useful insights”, and “deliver engaging experiences to the right people”.
Jack Marshall of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the suite competes with existing marketing cloud offerings by companies including Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, and IBM. In February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities. Following Google’s corporate restructure to make Alphabet Inc. its parent company, Google Fiber was moved to Alphabet’s Access division.
In April 2015, Google announced Project Fi, a mobile virtual network operator, that combines Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different telecommunication providers in an effort to enable seamless connectivity and fast Internet signal. In August 2023, Google became the first major tech company to join the OpenWallet Foundation, launched earlier in the year, whose goal was creating open-source software for interoperable digital wallets.
Google’s initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004. At IPO, the company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. The stock performed well after the IPO, with shares hitting $350 for the first time on October 31, 2007, primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market. The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.
GOOG shares split into GOOG class C shares and GOOGL class A shares. The company is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbols GOOGL and GOOG, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GGQ1. These ticker symbols now refer to Alphabet Inc., Google’s holding company, since the fourth quarter of 2015. In the third quarter of 2005, Google reported a 700% increase in profit, largely due to large companies shifting their advertising strategies from newspapers, magazines, and television to the Internet.
For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues. In 2011, 96% of Google’s revenue was derived from its advertising programs. Google generated $50 billion in annual revenue for the first time in 2012, generating $38 billion the previous year. In January 2013, then-CEO Larry Page commented, “We ended 2012 with a strong quarter … Revenues were up 36% year-on-year, and 8% quarter-on-quarter.
And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half.” Google’s consolidated revenue for the third quarter of 2013 was reported in mid-October 2013 as $14.89 billion, a 12 percent increase compared to the previous quarter.Google’s Internet business was responsible for $10.8 billion of this total, with an increase in the number of users’ clicks on advertisements.By January 2014, Google’s market capitalization had grown to $397 billion.
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