Google, owner of the world's most popular search engine, says it generated 54 billion U.S. dollars in economic activity in 2009 as businesses turned to online advertising amid the economic slowdown.
In a report released today Google said it helped generate revenue for advertisers, website publishers and non-profit organizations. Its report broke down the economic impact in all 50 U.S. states, with California receiving the biggest benefit at 14.1 billion dollars.
"We make most of our revenue from the ads shown next to our search results, on our other websites and the websites of our partners," Google said. "Through these ad programs, we help many others make a living, too."
The search giant, which reported 23.7 billion dollars in revenue last year, is looking for more customers amid competition from rivals such as Facebook and Twitter. The Internet's share of overall advertising spending is forecast to rise to 17 percent in 2012 from 13 percent last year, according to Zenith Optimedia, a London-based ad buyer owned by Publicis Groupe SA.
The economic impact described in the report reflects the revenue generated by Google's search engine and the ads that run next to query results, a program called AdWords. It also includes the amount Google pays to websites that run ads, as well as grants it makes to nonprofit organizations. "We conservatively estimate that for every dollar a business spends on AdWords, they receive an average of 8 dollars in profit through Google Search and AdWords," the company said in its report.
The company said the overall estimates don't include economic benefits such as consumers being able to find information or the effect of spending by local Google employees. Despite the upbeat report Google shares fell 9 cents to 477.07 dollars on the Nasdaq Stock Market yesterday. Their stock has declined 23 percent this year.
In recent years, the "smart city" has gradually become a hot topic, give the public a expectation on better future city life. In the international arena, has been more than 200 "smart city" projects are being implemented. Some domestic cities are taking positive action, Shanghai put forward that take advantage of urban wisdom to building a smart city, Wuhan in October last year, has taken substantive steps to construct smart city, Ningbo in September 2010 to make a decision on building a smart city, then introduced five-year Action Platform for the smart city construction. The city has also been classified as hubs of the province to build a central hub "smart city system. Conform to the wave of smart city, develop intelligent industry in the city to promote the construction of “two districts six cities ", the first to build a moderately prosperous society of a higher level to benefit the whole people, should play an active role.
An "intelligent life", and "smart city" is closer to us
Last year, two reports on Zhejiang may not seem like much, but let us smell the atmosphere of "intelligent life", see the dawn of the "smart city".
The first report: Ningbo held the first China Intelligence Fair, provincial ministries tripartite signed a "smart city" pilot cooperation agreement. September 2, 2011, China's first smart city Expo - 2011 China Smart City technology and application products Exposition "held in Ningbo. Three days exhibition, 310 enterprises participate in the exhibition, 16 total investment of 6.5 billion smart city cooperation projects located in Ningbo.