Have you ever wonder this: "Hey! How the hell does Google makes so much money?"
Google was incorporated by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. The company went public in 2004 and raised USD1.67b. At that time, for a 6 years old company, it's spectacular! Google has made hundred of their staff millionaires overnight after it went public. Their share price soars. Investor find Google has a strong growth plan and it currently dominates 40% of the internet search market.
So, where does the money comes from? Google is a search engine company. People do searches and they will say this "Just Google it". When you do a search in Google, do you realise on the right hand side of the search results is the sponsored links? Advertisers pay Google for showing their ads if the specific keywords is searched. This is called Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisement. Google has the product name called Google Adwords to cater this business. Advertisers will tell Google to show their ads if their selected keywords is searched. They can also instruct Google to show their ads in certain region or countries specifically.
PPC advertising is more effective than putting a banner in a website. What's the difference? If you put a banner in a website, you are not targeting general audience. You will not know how many viewed your banner and how many converted into sales. PPC is very targeted and you only pay Google when they click on your ads. Adwords will tell you how many impressions and clicks for your ads.
There are 200 million searches in Google daily. So now you know how the big chunk of money going to Google every day?
There's another Google product called Google Adsense, where Google pay website owners to place Google Ads. If their visitors click on the Ads in their website, the website owner will get paid. Simple as that. If you see on the right hand side of my blog, you can find some Google sponsored ads.
Besides that, Google is leveraging on other applications like Gmail, Google earth, Google maps, Picasa & etc to expand their advertisement coverage. Did you realised that in your Gmail, you also can find advertisements. Whenever you open an email, Gmail will show related ads based on your keywords in your email contents. Try it and see.
I am both Adwords and Adsense user. I use Adwords to promote Clickbank and Amazon products. And I use Adsense to generate revenue in my blog site.
Google also developed many free applications. Most of the applications are embedded their advertising features in it. Click on the logo below to see the applications:
I think Google did a pretty good job and revolutionize the search engine industry.
So, do you think Google deserve the money? You do the judge.
