While we expected the global supply chain issues to drag down the overall revenue of many companies, most tech giants actually earned an all-time high amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Among such companies is Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which reported annual revenue of $257 billion for the year 2021.
The company reported a 41 percent year-over-year growth to $257 billion, marking the first time Alphabet surpassed the $200 billion mark. In the fourth quarter alone, Google earned $75.3 billion, a 32 percent increase over the same period last year. Previously in 2020, Google had earned $183 billion in annual revenue.
Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement:
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,
Google’s annual revenue:
2021: $258 billion
2020: $183 billion
2019: $162 billion
2018: $137 billion
2017: $111 billion
2016: $90 billion
2015: $75 billion
2014: $66 billion
2013: $56 billion
2012: $46 billion
2011: $38 billion
2010: $29 billion
2009: $24 billion— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) February 1, 2022
The “Google other” category which includes the company’s smart home products as well as the Android operating system brought in $8.16 billion in revenue in Q4.
In the same quarter, while other tech giants like Meta, Twitter, Snapchat, and Youtube lost nearly $10 billion in revenue owing to the new iOS settings that affected many advertisers’ ability to target ads to users, Google generated advertising revenue of $61.24 billion and even bought in $8.63 billion revenue from Youtube ads in the fourth quarter of 2021.
The company also posted an operating loss of $890 million on its Cloud segment on revenue of $5.54 billion, while its Other Bets segment, which includes autonomous vehicle division Waymo and life sciences division Verily, earned $181 million in revenue.
Recently, the company has also announced a 20-for-1 stock split that will take effect in July. The stock split will give $0.001 for each share of the company’s Class A stock, Class B stock, and Class C stock.