In 2018, the majority of the company's 136 billion U.S. dollar revenues came from advertising through Google Sites or Google Network Sites – in 2018, Google Sites advertising revenue amounted to 96.3 billion U.S. dollars. The annual advertising revenue of Google network websites reached almost 20 billion U.S. dollars. Google’s quarterly revenue shows an overall growth from the 24.6 billion U.S. dollars in first quarter of 2017 to 33.6 billion U.S. dollars in fourth quarter of 2018.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of Google.com visitors are from the United States with a global share of 34.3 percent. There are many localized version of the Google Search available. Among the leading search engines, the worldwide market share of Google in October 2018 was over 90 percent.
Although Google’s product originally was based upon online search, the company has significantly broadened its services throughout the years. Video content sharing site YouTube was one of Google’s most prolific and expensive acquisitions and has been heavily integrated into Google’s online presence, its worldwide ubiquity changing the dynamics of user generated content and online video curation. As of February 2017, 68 percent of the U.S. population was found to have accessed YouTube to watch music videos or listen to music. The most popular YouTube partner channel in the United States in August 2018 was UMG@YouTube with 40.5 million unique users.
Apart from online search, advertising and online video, Google has branched out into further content, most notably the Android mobile operating system which as of the second quarter of 2018, accounted for almost 86 percent of the global smartphone operating system market. Content for Android devices can be purchased via the Google Play Store, a digital application distribution platform through which more than 2.6 million apps were made available as of September 2018. The most popular Android apps in the United States include Google products such as Search, Google Mail, YouTube and Google Maps.
Google has a wide range of products, including but not limited to the Chrome browser and operating system ChromeOS, hardware including the Chromecast and company's series of mobile devices such as the Nexus and Pixel devices, as well as online payment system Google Pay. Recently, Google has been making inroads in the virtual assistant market by releasing Google Now and Google Assistant. The company is currently investing in voice-controlled smart-home speakers and devices such as its Google Home series. With the growth of voice search and increasing usage of digital assistants, this is hardly a surprising move.
