Google Takes Lion's Share of Search Ad Revenues

For more than 20 years, Google‘s search engine has served as the world’s primary entryway to the internet, helping billions of people navigate the vast amounts of information available online. While there have always been alternatives – Lycos, AltaVista in the early days, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo more recently – Google’s de-facto monopoly has been unchallenged for most of that time.

And it’s been a wonderful time for Google/Alphabet and its shareholders. Last year alone, Google Search generated more than $160 billion in advertising revenue, making search to Alphabet what the iPhone is to Apple: the product that laid the foundation for the company’s long-lasting success and its trillion-dollar valuation.

According to estimates from Statista Market Insights, Google claimed almost 60 percent of global search advertising revenues last year. Chinese Baidu was the second largest player in the search advertising market with a share of 15 percent, followed by Amazon with 14 percent. In case you’re wondering when Amazon got into search engines: the company is making billions in advertising revenue from keyword advertising and paid search results on its own platform, which are included in Statista’s definition of search advertising.