How Does Google Make Money?
As a leading tech company, Google’s role in ecommerce is immense. Whether you’re a business owner optimizing your online store to cater to the world’s largest search engine or a shopper discovering new products, Google is bound to feature in your journey.
But how does Google make money?
With Google’s ad revenues in the billions and rising year after year, it’s clear that ads are one of the company’s biggest revenue sources. But that’s not the only way it makes money. Here’s a look at Google’s top revenue streams.
Google revenue breakdown: top five Google revenue sources
According to recent data, Google’s top revenue source in 2022 was search ads. Of the $279.81 billion in revenue the company brought in, a whopping $162.45 billion came from search ads. This includes ads on its search engine results page and other products like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Play.
This Google revenue breakdown shows that search ads made up the majority—or 58.1%—of its total revenue worldwide last year. This is no surprise, as search ads have been Google’s largest source of income for years.
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Google’s second-biggest income source is its Google Network ads, which generated $32.78 billion in revenue, or 11.7% of the total. This includes ads that appear on Google’s partner sites. This is followed by YouTube ads, which were Google’s third-largest income source. At $29.24 billion, revenue from YouTube ads made up 10.5% of Google’s total revenue.
Fourth and fifth on the list of Google’s top revenue sources are apps, hardware, and content, as well as Google Cloud, respectively. Revenue from the company’s apps, hardware, and content hit $29.06 billion, contributing to 10.4% of the total. Google Cloud was responsible for $26.28 billion, around 9.4% of the company’s 2022 revenues.
Google revenue breakdown (Q3 2023)
The latest earnings report from Alphabet, Google’s parent company, shows that search ads continue to drive Google’s revenue.
In Q3 2023, Google’s revenue totaled $76.7 billion, of which $44 billion (or 57.4%) was from search ads. Revenue from YouTube ads $8 billion (10.3%), and Google Network ads registered at $7.7 billion (10%). In other words, at $59.6 billion, the total ad revenue from Google constituted 77.8% of the company’s overall revenue for the quarter.