I reported at Search Engine Roundtable about a WebmasterWorld thread that notes how Google has paid out over $1 billion to publishers for the first time.

The amount — $1.13 billion to be exact — was paid out in the first quarter of 2007. That’s up from $976 million from the previous quarter. The figures come out of Google’s Q1 2007 earnings.

Here is a chart illustrating how payment to publishers has grown. The red line represents the Google pay-outs to publishers, while the blue line is the revenue earned by Google:

Not only did Google break the $1 billion mark, but Google is now also sharing the highest percentage of revenues with network sites than ever before. Here is a chart of that:

Related Topics: Google: AdSense | Google: Business Issues

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz