Google
Inc. said Tuesday it generated $14.1 billion in economic
activity for California and $54 billion in the nation as a whole.
The economic impact for California was more than any other state,
Mountain View-based Google said.
The company has more than 9,000 employees in the state that are
located in its headquarters as well as offices in Irvine, San Francisco
and Santa Monica; and in Google’s YouTube headquarters in San Bruno.
In its state report, Google said it now has 262,400 advertisers and
Web site publishers in its network.
"We calculate Google’s economic impact in each U.S. state by
examining the number of businesses, website publishers and non-profits
using our search and advertising tools," the company said.
The company also said it made 1,010 grants to nonprofits in the
state, for a grand total of $27 million.
Google has been slammed over privacy concerns both in the U.S. and
abroad and is facing increasing competition from Internet companies such
as Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc and San Francisco-based Twitter Inc.
Consumer Watchdog of Santa Monica, however, said the company "is
following the classic corporate evil-doer’s playbook as it attempts to
quell worldwide outrage over the WiSpy scandal."
John M. Simpson, a consumer advocate with the nonpartisan nonprofit,
said in a prepared statement, "This is what every big corporation does
when they are under fire. They divert attention from their wrongdoing
and spin a story about their contributions."
Consumer Watchdog said Google’s economic report relies on cooked
accounting that only counts benefits while factoring in none of the
costs Google places on society.
"What’s the economic cost to the content providers whose material is
grabbed without payment or the competitor whose listing is banished to
the nether regions of results because of Google’s monopolistic control
of search?" asked Simpson. "What’s the cost on society to maintain
Google’s extensive network of energy-eating server farms?"
Consumer Watchdog has launched a new Web site, http://insidegoogle.com/,
as part of the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization’s Google Privacy and
Accountability Project. "We want to open up the black box," said
Simpson.
