With Wikipedia going through with its decision to shut down the site for 24 hours as part of their protest against SOPA, it’s received quite a bit of criticism in the process for the decision. The Next Web’s own Brad McCarty gave a pretty good argument for how Wikipedia could have used its site to raise awareness, in the same way it was able to raise money for its own cause.
Of course the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t have any revenue to speak of, but what if other sites had made the same decision? We’ve put together a list of some of the Web’s major sites and figured out approximately how much they stood to lose, based on their annual revenue, if they had followed in Wikipedia’s footsteps.
Google: According to Wired, in July, Google was making $3 billion a month in advertising, most of which comes in from the text ads you see on the page. That comes down to about $100 million per day if Google had done more than cover its logo.
Facebook: With predictions for Facebook’s revenue for 2011 standing at $4.27 billion, according to that number, if they closed shop for one day they would lose almost $11.7 million, and gain a ton of pretty pissed off Facebook users.
Twitter: With an annual revenue of about $140 million, Twitter’s one day loss would fall $20,000 short of $400,000, but then its users would have nowhere to go to complain about Twitter being down.
eBay: In 2010, eBay’s revenue was $9 billion, with 2011 predicted to increase to $10.2 billion. If the predictions are accurate, eBay alone would put one day’s loss at almost $28 million, without taking into account each individual seller’s losses.
Amazon – The e-commerce giant pulled in $30 billion last year, but Amazon has been all over the place this year, with a spike in its revenue in July and a forecasted loss for Q4. Going off of last year’s figures, Amazon would have been looking at around $82 million lost in one day.
Yahoo: The company’s third quarter earnings came in at $1.07 billion. Based on that figure, Yahoo would have missed out on about $11.8 million, but it has far more to worry about these days.
Groupon: Based on early predictions, Groupon could be taking home up to $2.6 billion this year. Had it gone the Wikipedia route and made no sales for one day, it could have lost around $7 million.
If you want to speak out against SOPA but aren’t sure what to do, check out our guide here, none of which involves losing millions of dollars in the process.


















For companies like Google it might have legal implications beyond the lost revenue if they shut down for a day. Many companies rely on Google to drive traffic to their websites and sell products and services. If Google voluntarily shut down for a day they might be able to sue Google for lost revenue.
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LikeThat's crazy money! But like Will said, can you imagine the effect it would have on the online community?
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LikeFun article!
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LikeWow! Amazing figures!! With the revenue of only 1 day this companies could pay the external debt of the USA wasted on the stupid war! ;D
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LikeWhy would the social media sites and search engines blackout? So you can't do research on the law, and you can't find out what others are saying about it.... Great idea!
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LikeHow about, instead of blacking out, they just donated 24hrs worth of revenue to EFF, so that instead of "raising awareness" they could actually pay a bunch of lawyers and lobbyists to bury the legislation completely - activism is all well and good, but nothing speaks louder than cold hard case
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LikeSo what? Sure they lose out on a few million but the awareness they'd raise about SOPA could be enough to stop it altogether. What if SOPA does go through? Then they'll have bigger things to worry about and probably lose more money in time and resources than they would of from shutting down for 24 hours. Rich people piss.me.off!
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LikeEthan Anthony Martin I agree to a certain extent - and I'm not defending any of these companies but I can imagine there's far more that goes into the decision than loss of revenue for one day. Take a look at the petulant reaction of some of Wikipedia's own users today - it's pretty disappointing.
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LikeNancy MessiehEthan Anthony Martin I agree with Nancy here, the loss of money for them would just be one part of the equation here.
These sites shutting down would have such an extraordinary impact on the online economy as a whole. What about the losses that would be accrued by all the businesses that advertise on Google or Facebook? Could the platforms even then face liable action for these losses?
It would be a nice idea, in theory, but I think the ripple effect would just be too huge.
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LikeI don't think there's any "so-what" in this article. It's just interesting to know how much 24 hrs of activity are worth in companies that are based on the free market and revenues. Of course they could have given up that kind of money (even though the decision fo rthe CEO would understandably be higher) but I think it would have also been morally wrong to shut down social services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. To demonstrate against a restrictive legislation you prevent people from using their main means of communication and information-sharing for 24 hours? Basically no one would even know that anyone is protesting cause the whole SOPA awareness raising mainly went (and is going) through social networking platforms.
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Likemattdamdin People would, because there would be an explicative page, not a 404...
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LikeConversation from Facebook
That's an incredible amount of money. I don't blame them for not doing it. There are lots of different ways for companies theses sizes to protest and make their voices heard.
Sick numbers! What do we gave to do to show Lamar Smith that this is for real?
I emailed my representative over my district. Have you? Email/call your representatives! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page