In the year 2004, Google introduced their IPO to the world. Each share was priced at $100 and a total of 22,351,900 shares were traded on that single day.
The story which started on that day is still going strong. Today, each Google share is worth $800 and on an average 2-5 million of their shares exchange hands each and every day. This makes it the largest Internet based company, having market capital of more than $250 billion.
Last week, when Google announced their first quarter results for 2013, they reported that everything is going fine and that they are growing stronger.
Out of $14 billion in revenue, they made a cool profit of $3.35 billion. Compared to first quarter of last year, it is an increase of 31% in revenue.
Actually, for the last two quarters of 2012, that is Q4 and Q3, Google have consistently crossed the figure of $14 billion in revenue. If you ask any financial advisor, this is really awesome financial health of a 9 year old listed company.
And the most interesting part is that, $12.95 billion or 93% of Google’s revenue has been generated from just one aspect of their business: PPC or Pay per Click advertising through their Adwords platform.
Say a person from 1920 suddenly arrives here, and asks me: What is Google and how do they earn so much money?
My answer would be: Google is a search engine and almost everyone using Internet uses Google to search. As so many people are using Google, they advertise their web space and earn money from that. Not only their web space, but they also advertise on websites which choose to become their partners. And this story is going on since 1998 when Google was first launched.
What Can Indian Small and Medium Scale Businesses Owners Learn From Google?
Indians small business owners are not utilizing the web and more importantly Google as the rest of the world is doing to promote their business.
There are around 40 million small business owners in India, out of which, around 500,000 have their presence online. And from these 500,000 small business owners, less than half have used Google PPC services to promote their business.
These starling facts were revealed by Karim Temsamani, who is the Google’s Asia Pacific president during an event called Helping Small Businesses Think Big in Singapore.
The question is not that whether Indian small business owners should use Google Adwords or PPC in general, but the overall usage of web.
Even if they use the organic search traffic from Google and choose a better online marketing strategy, they can grow and expand big. And better SMB sector in India will mean more entrepreneurs, more business, more employment and more wealth for the society.
[Infographic Source: Statista]
