Google parent firm Alphabet surpassed a new revenue record in 2021, despite the coronavirus pandemic and persistent problems with the global supply chain. For full-year 2021, Google earned $257 billion in revenue, up 41% from the year before. In the fourth quarter of 2021, revenues were $75.3 billion, up 32% from a year earlier.
Google has managed to earn more than $200 billion in annual revenue
Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated in a statement that:
“Q4 saw ongoing strong growth in our advertising business, which helped millions of businesses thrive and find new customers, a quarterly sales record for our Pixel phones despite supply constraints, and our Cloud business continuing to grow strongly.”
According to Google’s latest financial results, the company doesn’t provide specific data for its Pixel phones, Nest smart home devices, or Android operating system which are included in its “Google other” category. The “Services” category also includes YouTube and Search, two of Google’s top-performing businesses. For the fourth quarter, Google’s “other” category generated $8.16 billion in revenue.
For the last quarter of 2021, Google earned $61.24 billion in advertising revenue. Last year, Apple made privacy adjustments to iOS, requiring users to opt in if they wanted to allow applications to monitor them across other apps and on web pages. In October, the Financial Times said that Facebook (now Meta), Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube had lost approximately $10 billion in income during the second half of 2021 as a result of new iOS settings introduced in July.
Because Google uses its search traffic and YouTube to gather data, it has thus far been less impacted by the iOS update. In 2021 alone, Google earned over $8 billion through YouTube advertising.
Last year, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) broke the $200 billion barrier for the first time, which is nearly three times as much as the firm recorded in 2016.