FACTS – Internet giants

THE INTERNET

• The number of internet users rose from 1 billion in 2005 to an estimated 3.2 billion in 2015.¹
• A typical day in the life of the internet involves:¹
  • 207 billion emails sent
  • 8.8 billion YouTube videos watched
  • 4.2 billion Google searches
  • 803 million tweets
• It took Google 2 days to collect 5 exabytes of data = total amount of data produced by humankind since 2003.²
• YouTube users post 100 hours of video for every minute of actual time that goes by.³
• Traditional companies employ 10 more people per dollar earned than digital companies.⁴

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THE BIG THREE

Google is now the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.⁵

Largest internet companies by market capitalization*, as of March 2016:⁶

* total value of shares

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MONOPOLIZING

• Amazon is now the biggest retailer in the US, way ahead of runner-up Walmart.⁷
• Alibaba has about 80% of e-commerce in China.⁸
• Facebook, the world’s largest social network, claims 1.65 billion active members.⁹
• Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has bought 190 companies since 2001, including X-Lab, Calico, Nest, YouTube and the Android operating system.¹⁰
• Facebook has acquired 50 companies since 2005, including Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Oculus VR, Spotify and Messenger.¹⁰
• Amazon owns over 40 companies including Alexa, Audible, LoveFilm, Kiva Systems, Zappos, Kindle, BoxOfficeMojo, Fire.tv, Twitch.tv, Goodreads, The Book Depository, DP Review and Prime Music.¹⁰

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MEDIA TAKEOVER

The idea that digital advertising revenue would support online news media has proved to be an illusion:

• 85% of every new dollar spent on online advertising goes to Google or Facebook – not the media companies generating news content.¹²
• Nearly 25% of ‘people’ who view online video ads are actually robots used by fraudsters.⁴
• Facebook has three million active advertisers, mostly small businesses.¹³
• Facebook’s Chris Hughes bought the prestigious but struggling US New Republic magazine in 2012, selling it again in 2016. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013.⁸

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BILLIONAIRES and TAX AFFAIRS

Bill Gates ($75 billion) is still the world’s richest man, but in 2016 two more digital giants joined the Forbes list of the world’s top 10 billionaires:¹⁴

Google founders Larry Page, worth $35.2 billion, came 12th; and Sergey Brin, with $35 billion, came 13th.¹⁵

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TAX

$6,300 – the amount Facebook’s UK subsidiary paid in corporation tax in 2014, despite handing out $51 million in staff bonuses.¹⁶

$1.4 billion – the amount of UK tax avoided by Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon and eBay in 2014, using loopholes that allowed them to pay corporation tax at a rate of just 0.25%.¹⁷

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1. World Bank, Digital Dividends 2016 nin.tl/WB-report 
2. Eric Schmidt, quoted 2010 nin.tl/digital-monopolies 
3. Michael Harris, The End of Absence, Current, 2014. 
4. Douglas Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Penguin, 2016. 
5. news.com.au, 2 February 2016, nin.tl/google-profit-soars 
6. statistica.com 2016, nin.tl/top-US-internet-cos 
7. fortune.com, 2015/11/06 nin.tl/Amazons-huge-lead 
8. The Economist, ‘Robber Barons and Silicon Sultans’, 3 January 2015. 
9. firstpost.com 28 April 2016 nin.tl/fb-sales-swell 
10. Wikipedia 
11. netmarketshare.com, April 2016 nin.tl/most-used-search-engine 
12. nytimes.com, 2016/04/18 nin.tl/faltering-ad-revenue 
13. cnbc.com/2016/03/02/ nin.tl/leap-in-fb-advertisers 
14. cbc.ca nin.tl/Forbes-internet-rich 
15. forbes.com 2016 rich profiles nin.tl/billionaire-Brin 
16. theguardian.com 2015/oct/11 nin.tl/tax-avoiding-fb 
17. mirror.co.uk 26/Jan/2016 nin.tl/big-5-dodge-tax