It’s official. Google is now generating more in revenues than its three largest competitors combined (don’t even ask about its share of the profits.) To put it another way: just the $1.5bn in extra revenue it added compared to a year before was almost as much as the total produced by Yahoo!
The numbers for the latest quarter make sorry reading, particularly when you consider that a lot of Microsoft’s reported growth online came from its acquisition of aQuantive:
Revenue – $m Growth / (Contraction) – %
Google 4,230 57
Yahoo! 1,768 12
AOL (estimate) 1,250 (37)
Microsoft 670 25
It has become conventional wisdom in online advertising circles to talk about the coming boom in display, as traditional brand advertisers move online. The companies that dominate online display, like Yahoo, also talk hopefully about capturing more of the value from overall internet activity – they reason that if display ads prompt people to carry out internet searches for a product or brand, some of the money that results from the search advertising should rightfully go to display (good luck with proving that one.)
The strongest message from Google’s analyst day this week, though, was that there are many more ways yet to be found that will make search advertising even more powerful. Sure, Google is also diversifying into display and other formats – but for now, search is the main game in town, and likely to stay that way.
