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back to article Whatever you've got to say about Google, it can't hear you over the sound of it banking $85m a day in pure profit

Google parent company Alphabet says it logged a 23 per cent jump in revenues in the final quarter of 2018, even as losses from its various side projects continue to mount. For the company's fourth quarter of the year, ending December 31, released Monday this week: Revenues of $39.3bn were up 23 per cent from $32.2bn in Q4 …

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  1. Josco

    Who is paying?

    I use Google quite a lot, Gmail, Maps et al but I have never knowingly clicked an advert link nor responded to any of the adverts that are thrust upon me. I have a similar response to junk calls. So who is responding and making the advertisers cough up?

    I could be willing to pay for email (an allowable cost against tax I should imagine) if that would prevent a lot of spam.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Josco
      Reply Icon

      Re: Who is paying?

      Could I say that I have never been first to comment before?

      2 5 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who is paying?

      You ARE paying, with your personal data. Worse, you're also paying with data of other people - every time you receive an email from someone, their email gets read. If they don't have a Google account, that reading is effectively without permission, and you allowed that to happen.

      This is why the companies using the word "free" should be hit over the head by the Trade Descriptions Act: it is not "free" - you just don't pay with money.

      You really, really ought to learn reading the conditions you sign up to before you engage with a company.

      15 6 Reply
    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who is paying?

      It is all those other 'cough, cough' services that we pretty well have to use day in, day out.

      services such as 'googleanalytics', 'googletagmanager' and the rest.

      With their tracking of your internet activity and use of things like GMail they probably know more about you that you can remember.

      You don't have to click on the adverts. Displaying it is more than enough.

      Most of us don't have a clue about our 'google profile'. You can at least take steps to minimise it.

      - use services such as 'duckduckgo' for searching

      - Stop using GMail

      - Get rid of your Google account

      - Exercise your right to be forgotten if possible.

      - Don't use a carrier/manufacturer supplied Android build... {do you really know what tracking Google has put in it?}

      - Turn off location services unless really, really needed.

      Google is EVIL but not as bad as Facebook etc.

      It is up to you to protect yourself when on the internet. Why aren't you doing it eh?

      6 0 Reply
    4. Version 1.0 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Who is paying?

      Anyone advertising is paying every time your fat fingers try to close an app and hit the advert instead ($$$) or your mouse drifts off to one side hit an advert pops up ($$$) ... plus those little cookies mean that Google can sell the Advertiser a "user specific" advert ... ($$$).

      1 0 Reply
    5. ArrZarr Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Re: Who is paying?

      EDIT: I misread your question. Turns out that people in general trust paid search links and Shopping results. They do tend to be more relevant than the natural search results as they're much more directly curated to search terms than the SEO guys can achieve. Original answer below.

      To answer seriously rather that all the (not entirely unjustified) paranoid rantings above:

      - "Google web properties revenues – ad money from Google's own websites – were $27bn"

      This is companies paying for Paid Search ads at the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). That could either be the text ads (PPC/CPC) or the shopping ads (PLA/LIA). The shopping tab on the results page also pays into this. This also includes Youtube pre/post roll ads and banner ads on youtube, Google+ etc.

      - "Google network revenues – display ad cash from non-Google sites – were $5.6bn"

      This is also companies paying for banner ads, just from the rest of the web. Google has nowhere near the dominance in the display market that it enjoys in the search and shopping markets, but still buys ad space on second & third party sites (A quick look at El Reg's ads shows me that they most likely use the Google Display Network (GDN)). In this case, the Company pays Google who, in turn, pays sites for screen real-estate.

      To round off this overly long answer, the revenue for all of the advertising cash Google is raking in comes from the same place that pays millions for an ad slot during the Superb Owl or the world cup.

      0 0 Reply
    6. Dedobot
      Reply Icon

      Re: Who is paying?

      You are "the product", its free :)

      1 0 Reply
  2. MJB7
    Pint

    $84m profit a day

    That's just over $84m profit a day, every day, for the whole year.

    Or, to put it another way, just a hair under $1000 profit per second

    Icon: I think the drinks are on Messrs Page and Brin.

    3 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: $84m profit a day

      Poor Google, only making $84m profit a day ... no wonder they can't afford to pay taxes ... excuse me while I go off and vomit.

      2 0 Reply
  3. steviebuk Silver badge

    Are they

    Going to pay the UK their tax now then?

    2 0 Reply

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