How Much Money Does Google Make a Year? (It’s A Lot)

We all know that Google, or its parent company Alphabet, is one of the digital giants making an astonishing amount of money. But exactly how much money does Google make a year? And are they spending it wisely?

How much profit does Google make in a year?

The annual gross profit for Google’s parent company Alphabet has been increasing year-on-year, achieving heights that are almost incomprehensible to the average person.

In 2019, Google’s total revenue was $161.857 billion, up from $136.82 billion in 2018. Their gross profit was a whopping $89.96 billion. This is all despite coming under increasing pressure from regulators and being hit by a €1.49 billion fine from the European Commission for illegal misuse of its dominant position and breaching EU antitrust rules.

More recently, it is thought that COVID-19 has had an impact on Alphabet’s profits in the first quarter of 2020, as they saw a “significant slowdown in ad revenues”. However, it is clear that Google is still going to make an astonishing amount of money in 2020.

In 2019, Google’s total revenue was $161.857 billion, up from $136.82 billion in 2018. Their gross profit was a whopping $89.96 billion.

Where does their money come from?

If you’re wondering how much money Google makes a year, you will likely also be asking where it all comes from.

The majority of Google’s money comes from their advertising revenue — this amounted to 134.81 billion US dollars in 2019. This includes Google Search ads, network display ads on third-party websites and YouTube ads.

Since so many businesses choose to advertise on Google, the dominant search engine, they get most of their money this way.

What would happen if they invested their money in good causes?

We are not the first to ask what would happen if Google donated more of their profits to charity, but it’s a question worth asking. Alphabet does have a philanthropic wing for Google — Google.org. In 2017, Google donated $255 million in cash to charity, which was 0.9% of its $27.2 billion pretax profit for the year.

More recently, Google pledged $800 million to help with COVID-19 relief efforts, although most of this was in the form of Google Ads credits. They have also announced a 5-year commitment to award $1 billion in grants and contribute 1 million employee volunteer hours.

While this sounds like a lot of money and is arguably better than nothing, it all amounts to just a tiny percentage of their overall profits.

Plus, they seem to waste a lot of money on their ‘Other Bets’ — which are essentially their non-Google businesses. These include X, a somewhat mysterious research and development lab nicknamed Alphabet’s ‘moonshot factory’, DeepMind, which focuses on AI research, and Sidewalk Labs, which is concerned with urban innovation through smart city technology. It all sounds very exciting, but Alphabet’s Other Bets saw an operating loss of $1.12 billion in the first quarter of 2020.

We believe that if Google pledged to commit a certain amount of their profits to charity each year, instead of these ‘moonshot’ investments, they could make a real change to major global issues.

It’s hard to put an exact estimate on something like the cost of ending world hunger. Back in 2008, the UN put the estimate at $30 billion but current estimates range from $7 billion to $265 billion per year. What is clear, however, is that if Alphabet donated 95% of their 2019 profits to charity, that $85.46 billion could certainly help a great deal with world poverty and dealing with the global effects of climate change.

Charitable search engines are a valuable alternative to Google as they donate a significant amount of their profits to worthy causes. Searching online is a part of our everyday lives now, but we don’t have to rely on a digital giant who makes an obscene yearly profit.

In fact, our charitable search engine, SearchScene, does actually donate 95% of the profits it makes from advertising to international charities. Our aim is to help fight climate change and consequently alleviate the global suffering that is caused by climate change.

While using SearchScene, you can choose to select the charities you want to support, or choose to keep all of them selected. Then, at the end of each year, our donations will be divided up according to everyone’s chosen charities.

If you want to find an ethical alternative to the money-making machine that is Google, why not start with SearchScene?

This article first appeared on Medium.