• Google made $3.19B in 2004
• Ad revenue was 99% of their revenue
• The US is about 66% of their revenue
• 51% of their money comes from Google websites. 49% from non-Google sites
• It costs them 79 cents to buy a dollar's worth of traffic from the non-Google sites
• The payoff on the Overture patent was charged at $201M.

What I find most interesting of all is the tension between these two statements:

Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We believe that the most effective, and ultimately the most profitable, way to accomplish our mission is to put the needs of our users first. ... We will do our best to provide the most relevant and useful search results possible, independent of financial incentives. Our search results will be objective and we will not accept payment for inclusion or ranking in them.

We generate our revenue almost entirely from advertising, and the reduction in spending by or loss of advertisers could seriously harm our business.

Is Google capable of balancing those opposing forces? I'm sure they think they are.

¶ 3/31/2005