If it seems like you spend a lot of your “Internet time” using one or more of Google’s popular web services, you certainly aren’t alone. But if you’re like me you’ll be shocked to find out just how many others do the same.
According to a new study by the folks at Deepfield Analytics, Google properties such as Google Search, Gmail, Youtube, Google + and others now account for roughly 1/4 of all the traffic on the entire Internet!
One of the most amazing stats released from this just-completed study is that Facebook, Twitter and Netflix combined – themselves virtual behemoths – don’t attract as much traffic as Google.
The folks at Google are constantly working to build and refine their online empire by either creating or buying up additional products and services and eventually dumping the ones that fail to take off in the marketplace. It wasn’t all that long ago that Google was nothing more that an Internet search engine, but today the company has a foothold in virtually every corner of the Internet along with a growing selection of innovative hardware devices.
Google became a public company on August 19, 2004, and virtually overnight thousands of Google employees and investors became newly minted millionaires and billionaires. Since that time the once-beloved Google has become a lightning rod for criticism, but you have to give them credit. Their decision makers sure know how to build and grow an online empire, and they show no signs of slowing down any time soon.
Whether or not Google’s dominance of the Internet a good thing is a topic that is certainly open for debate. But the fact that they do indeed dominate it is now beyond question.