I am all for putting your best foot forward, after all that is what SEO is all about but it seems Google has used some very creative accounting in making claims about how much it contributes to the US economy.
They (Google) claim that in the US they “generated $54 billion of economic value in 2009.” How did they arrive at that figure?
How, then, do we then correctly calculate Google’s contribution to the economy?
The same way we determine the economic impact of other companies: the value of the goods and services produced, minus the value of all of resources consumed. Google generated revenue of $23.65 Billion in 2009 and by their own reckoning, their expenditures were about $17.13 Billion, which means that Google’s worldwide value addition was about $6.5 Billion. Google does just under half of its business in the US, so their US economic impact in the US was about $3.2 Billion, far less than the $54 Billion they claim.
One Response to “Google’s 50 Billion Plus Chest Thumping Gets Dissected”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:24 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kittu K, SEO – Social Media. SEO – Social Media said: Google’s 50 Billion Plus Chest Thumping Gets Dissected: I am all for putting your best foot forward, after all tha… http://bit.ly/bh7xr4 [...]