How Google Spends Its Money (Infographic)

Ever since it was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google has been steadily rising in terms of products, influence and revenue. After years of hard work and innovation, Google got to be one of the most profitable and highest growing companies. And apart from other companies, Google has several ways of generating revenue apart from selling shares or getting it from private investment. Most of its revenue comes from partnering with merchants and advertisers through Google Checkout, Google AdWords and Google AdSense. Even though Google currently has many more active products and services, 96% of Google’s revenue came from its advertising programs in 2011, with more than $26 billion from the Google-owned websites and $10 billion from websites in their content network.

With AdWords, advertisers are able to submit ads in Google search pages targeting a list of keywords related to their business, while AdSense offers websites owners the opportunity to monetize their traffic and get paid for clicks these ads incur. With these two services, Google is the leading provider of targeted advertising on the web, available in dozens of countries across the globe.

Google has a constantly expanding list of software and hardware products, including Android, the world’s most-used smartphone platform. With users increasingly accessing the web from their mobile devices and mobile ads costing significantly less than regular ads, Google’s revenue are expected take a dip in the following years. The average cost per click that was paid by advertisers to Google decreased 15% from a year earlier, and fell 3% from the prior quarter of 2012. But until then, check out the following infographic to see how Google makes and spends its money, !

Image compliments of Masters in Finance Degree Guide

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