It’s not a secret that Google has a high influence on many companies world wide. Many (smaller) companies rely on Google Advertising and on Google search for their business. And there are many sites out there who make money out of Adsense.
Last week in the US it was National Small Business week. A reason for Google to tell the world once again how important they are. And they decided to throw it in their with quite the air: “Google’s U.S. economic impact” was the title of their post. In this post they explain how much money Google is making the US. They even set up a special page where you can not only download the report but also look at different states to see where Google has the most impact.
A look at the map show us for example that Google generated $863 million of economic activity for 25,000 Minnesota businesses, website publishers and non-profits in 2009. In the ‘homestate’ California Google generated 14.1 billion dollars. In total Google ‘made’ the US over 54 billion dollars in economic activity.
Great numbers, right? Yes indeed. It shows us how important the new way we are doing business, online, is helping the economy in general. But don’t be fooled too much. The way Google is communicating this is mainly an advertisement for the company. Yes, Google does make a big difference, but its not the only way to make money.
Still, its nice to take a look at the numbers and see what Google has to say about their own impact. They really believe they make a difference. And they do. Right?
Another interesting question can be asked when seeing these numbers: how did Google get all the numbers? Did they ask the business owners, or have they been looking at some Analytics numbers…?
