Ad-free Google News generates $100 million per year?

Written on 24th July 2008                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent

Marissa Mayer at web 2.0 conference in 2006, picture from D Farber (CC)

Marissa Mayer, head of search products and user experience at Google, put a number on the site’s revenue during a speech at the Fortune Brainstorm conference earlier this week. Fortune editor Jon Fortt about the income model: “The online giant figures that Google News funnels readers over to the main Google search engine, where they do searches that do produce ads. And that’s a nice business. Think of Google News as a $100 million search referral machine”

It seems that Google News generates $100 million revenue per year, despite the lack of ads or an obvious revenue model. Google news has been a sensitive subject before, and Mayer might have put even more pressure on the legal team with her comments on revenue. Until recently, the Google legal team could argue that the site was not profiting from the service. The site is more liable for a court case since the site’s referring features turns out to be a cash cow for the search portal.

Valleywag reporter Nicholas Carlson, shared an interesting perspective. “When she puts a number on how much money Google News makes for her employer, she gives newspapers’ lawyers a big, fat, juicy reason to demand a cut of the business. Sure, the newspapers already make money from the traffic Google sends their way — but do you think, given a $100 million prize, they won’t try to double-dip?” He notes that Mayer is worth hundreds of millions, and that Google might as well can fetch the check for the legal bill with her.