Jan Keromnes

Google is making lots of money. Every day we hear about them buying start-ups with great potential (or even wind-mill farms for that matter). At Wall Street, the colorful internet giant ended the third quarter of 2010 with $33.4 billion in cash, his stock now approaching a $200 billion market valuation, almost catching up with Microsoft’s $218 billion.

Now here’s a question I hear a lot around me these days: “How in the world can they possibly earn that much?” And it’s a good question – one I couldn’t answer better than with a hesistant: AdSense? So I did what most made sense to me. I googledit…

Apart from the world-famous AdWords program (first place positioning for specific keywords, Google’s main source of revenue according to wikipedia), the company seems to be omnipresent in the world of business solutions, with a plethora of various services including AdSense (custom advertising for webmasters), Analytics (reports on marketing campaigns and websites), Website Optimizer, Webmaster Central, Places Earth and Maps (geospatial internet positioning for enterprises), Enterprise Search, Checkout, Base, Apps, DoubleClick, plus brand new social services like Friend Connect… short, Google has sought out every single need typical to an enterprise, and responded to it with a handy and easy-to-use service. Together with an unrivaled talent for communication and advertising, the guys at Moutain View placed their products in every business, accessing to a state of monopoly – it’s like Microsoft’s operating system, which is installed on approximately 90% of computers.