Data-giant Google's revenues from APAC growing faster than elsewhere

Google’s businesses dominate search, web browsing, internet ads and videos, channelling a whopping 9 billion searches every day. The company’s email service, Gmail, which has about 1.8 billion users (as of 2021), alone collects about 3,600 petabytes of data in a year. And how much is that? Well, one petabyte can hold 223,101 high-quality movies.

And on Sunday, with Lionel Messi on the field chasing the World Cup for Argentina, Google Search logged its highest-ever traffic in 25 years, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundal Pichai tweeted.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, the apex court in the European Union ruled that Google must delete data on European users if it is found to be incorrect. Back in 2014, Europe had also granted its citizens the “right to be forgotten”. In the digital context, it meant that any European citizen could ask online search engines, such as Google, to delete any sensitive information on them.

Even though search continues to dominate Google’s business, its share from advertising subsidiaries, and YouTube advertisements is increasing. That said, more than half of Alphabet’s revenue (Google’s parent company) came from Google Search in 2021.

Google’s advertising subsidiaries and YouTube ads accounted for about 40 per cent of Alphabet’s revenue in 2021, up from 25 per cent five years ago. And while the company's growth may still be driven by the United States, data shows that it is expanding into other regions as well.

A Business Standard analysis found that though most of Alphabet’s revenue in 2021 – 45.7 per cent – comes from the United States, its growth has slowed over four years.

Meanwhile, the revenue share from Europe, and the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is almost twice that of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, but it is the latter that is growing at a faster pace. Revenues from APAC are growing at a compound annual growth rate of 29.2 per cent, while those from EMEA are growing at 20.9 per cent. 

Given Google’s expansion in the region, it is no surprise, therefore, that the company’s profits in India have multiplied three-fold in the last five years. Google India made a net profit of Rs 1,238.9 crore in FY22 compared to Rs 407.2 crore five years ago.