It’s common knowledge that Google is the world’s biggest search engine, but most of us probably have no idea just how powerful the Mountain View, California company actually is. Google originally set sail in 1996 as a research project before going public in 2004 with the ambitious mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Google now single handedly impacts just about every facet of life in America, growing from a Quixotian startup to the most respected name in tech. The “Goog” is so much a part our lives  now we hardly even notice its influence on media, technology, entertainment, commerce; and dissemination of information; essentially, how we filter our reality. And it’s not just internet searches – Google owns YouTube.com, the biggest video site in the world, as well as owning or partnering with Amazon, the omniscient book buying site, and Android, the Google Chrome web browser, Blogger.com, Google Glasses, and Gmail email services, among many others.
To help put Google’s world dominance in perspective, we put together 15 facts that demonstrate its prevalence:

1. Google holds a 65.6% market share of all U.S. Internet searches. That’s about 45% higher than the second competitor, Bing.com.

2. Google accounts for 85.78% of worldwide search engine market share.

3. Google receives about 7.2 billion page views per day, or over 87.8 billion searches per month!  The next highest is 14.5 billion searches by China’s top search engine, Baidu.

4. About 620 million people visit Google.com every day.

5. In 2013, Google brought in $59.83 billion in revenue and generated $15.42 billion in the first quarter of 2014 alone. Its total assets are listed at $110.92 billion.

6. Just through the first half of 2012, Google had already taken in more ad dollars than the entire U.S. print media collects every year.

7. Google originates most of its ad dollars from AdWords, and advertisers spent $38.6 billion with Google last year, up 73% from 2005.To put that in perspective, Facebook generated $6.4 billion in advertising that same year.

8. Google has an estimated $144 billion market value, which tops media giants Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, the iconic ad agency Publicis Groupe, and the New York Times…COMBINED!

9. Google has more than one million servers around the world as of 2007, managing 24 Petabytes of data.

10. It has 70 offices in 40 countries and employs well over 52,000 people.

11. Every day, Google uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes.

12. Google is listed as the #1 website in the world.

13. “Google” is now a verb in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary. Another term, <span “font-family:arial;mso-bidi-font-family:=”” georgia;color:#1a1a1a”=””>Googlezon, describes the powerful partnership between Google and online store Amazon.com.

14. In 2013, Google ranked #5 for spending of all political lobbyists.

15. Google has purchased a 1 million square foot commercial space in London, England, which should be ready as a main office by 2016.