Google “Economic Impact” Report Shows How Google Contributes To Local Economies

Google has released a report that shows its economic contributions to local economies in the US. Timed to coincide with National Small Business Week this is something of a “charm offensive” and effort to burnish Google’s recently tarnished corporate image:

Google’s not just a search engine. We’ve also helped hundreds of businesses in every U.S. state to grow. Across the U.S., Google’s search and advertising tools generated $54 billion of economic activity in 2009.

Full of data, the report is interesting and designed to showcase how Google helps “the little guy” in all 50 states (small businesses). It’s partly intended to combat the notion that Google is a corporate behemoth riding roughshod over consumer privacy and smaller competitors — the images associated with recent anti-trust and privacy complaints leveled against the company.

With a little effort, one could estimate the total number of Google advertisers in the US from the data disclosed in the report.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiGn8HPGrMM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: It’s disappointing Google didn’t release an easy-to-read table of the data state-by-state, so that people could easily discover where the most activity is generated. So, I did a quick skim to pull some figures:

• California was tops for most economic activity generated, $14.1 billion —  or 26% of Google’s total economic estimate
• Alaska was at the bottom, with a tiny $16 million generated — or 0.30% of Google’s total economic estimate