Reply #13: Mostly they make money on advertising... [View All]

[President Kerry]

Say 50 million searches are conducted online daily, worldwide (i made the number up, but the magnitude is about right).. About half of all those searches will give you "sponsored links" (basically text ads), alongside your actual search results. That's because hundreds of thousands of businesses actually pay Google to put in their ads when a searcher puts in a particular keyword (they continuously auction on thousands of keywords). About 13-14% of the impressions of those ads end up being clicked. The average is, say 15 cents per click (ranges from a penny to dollars per click depending on keyword). That's the cash Google pockets, and if you work out the numbers it adds up to HUUUUUGE profits. What's more, Google enters into partnership with other private websites that run Google's search boxes.. Google's reach is humongous.