8 May 2021 by Mondo2.0

Google, Revenue, Advertising, Smart Working, and … the list goes on

In the first quarter of 2021 Google almost tripled its profit: 55.31 billion dollars. A growth trend of +34%, equal to 18 billion dollars. With such striking figures our article could end immediately. With just two lines of text.
It is precisely these figures that lead us to reflect on this “digital transition” that we, for almost a decade now, have decided to call World 2.0:

  • It is evident, one only has to listen to any television news programme, that the productivity indicators of all “real” companies are negative. The pandemic has often confined us to our homes. Moments of conviviality, purchases, meetings have decreased … we compensated by using the Internet more.
  • We are all (or almost all) at home. Google employees are no exception: thanks to smart working Alphabet Holding, the company that controls Google, saved as much as 268 million dollars in the first quarter of 2021. Fewer trips, less presence at offices, fewer unexpected events, lower costs.
  • Lower expenses, greater visibility online but, above all, more advertising revenue. Not only through paid SEO (the method of positioning prominently in the SERP, the list of search results) but also through “outbound” advertising (TV-style commercials that precede selected videos) on YouTube, with more than 6 billion dollars.
  • Positive revenues, falling costs. Indicators to which investors all over the world pay particular attention. The “Google” share (source: Il Sole 24 Ore) increased by +5.37% from the beginning of 2021 to today. On the stock market, as always, it never rains but it pours—for those already doing well.

The pandemic has produced an extraordinary digital acceleration: the major players of the web, from Amazon to Google, from Microsoft to Facebook, have multiplied their presence, availability and the attention they receive from their audiences. At the same time, in an increasingly “less real” context, they have reduced their operating costs.

Google, Revenue, Advertising, Smart Working:
“Money, money, …” as Liza Minnelli would sing.

Constant, compulsive, highly personal access to our PCs and smartphones combines with the decentralized yet centralized management of many services: if I “buy” online I always go to …, if I “search” online I always go to …, to get information online I always go to … .

An information short circuit that does nothing but draw energy from its own cybercustomers.

A few weeks ago a large cargo ship stranded in the Suez Canal brought to everyone’s attention a paradox in the “real world”: many ships have a single passage point to reach certain places, or at least a single passage point whose navigation times and costs are reasonable. We wondered how such a “lock-in” situation could still be possible in the 21st century.

But few of us, in those same days, wondered why in the analogous virtual world the many “virtual” Suez Canals present online had never received the proper attention.

Among these, Google is the “Suez Canal” of information and knowledge. Any search carried out online passes first through Google and its list of results.

The divide between digital and real is showing itself in many different ways:

  • The divide in terms of growth and productivity between digital and real companies. From this follows a strong economic and financial imbalance.
  • The possibility of carrying out smart working and reducing real costs for online companies.
  • The shift of advertising spaces from traditional media to the web.
  • The increasingly strong attachment—perhaps it is more correct to say dependence—on the web by billions of people everywhere in the world.
  • The growth of dynamics of social communication, personal exposure, purchasing and online booking among many, very many cyberusers.
  • The emergence of new professional roles on the web, not only technical IT roles. In recent years dozens and dozens of new professions have appeared…
  • The decrease in demand for traditional jobs, a phenomenon that began well before the pandemic.

We are certain that with the end of the pandemic, which we hope will come as soon as possible, some of these indicators will return to the “real world”; we expect a kind of restart.

But the “new normal”, the new normality, will also in the long term be characterized by numerous factors of economic and social transformation of a digital nature. Factors that will have significant effects on the world of work and on social stability.

Digital services enjoy the favor of the public (indeed, the public depends on them), have no spatial or temporal constraints, are sustainable in terms of costs and productivity, are supranational and, for now, minimally regulated. They are light, they are in the cloud, they are always available, they did not suffer the restrictions caused by the pandemic.

We all have a refrigerator and, unless it breaks, we will not go and buy another one. Many of us have a car and, in the absence of a well-paid and stable job, we will hardly buy a new one.

But everyone feels the daily need to go online: to “consume” searches, content, videos, news, posts, chats, hashtags, events … and consequently, increasingly often, to buy online tangible goods that are suggested to us precisely by the network. After all, on the web the real product “is us”.

The 21st century will be remembered for the beginning of the web-modern era and the digital society, with the pandemic as the trigger of this irreversible process of digitalization.

Going back from World 2.0? By now it is impossible.

Mondoduepuntozero