Google now accounts for 25% of all internet traffic in North America, with around 60% of all Internet-connected devices exchanging traffic with the web giant’s servers in an average day, according to new research. The study, from analytics firm Deepfield, found that North American traffic to Google has increased massively, from just 6% three years […]
Google now accounts for 25% of all internet traffic in North America, with around 60% of all Internet-connected devices exchanging traffic with the web giant’s servers in an average day, according to new research.
The study, from analytics firm Deepfield, found that North American traffic to Google has increased massively, from just 6% three years ago to 25% now.
Based on measurements of end device and audience share, that makes the Internet company’s reach larger than Facebook, Netflix and Twitter combined.
Deepfield attributes Google’s dominance to the diversified range of new products being built and provided by Google.
Some 60 percent of all Internet end devices exchange traffic with Google servers during the course of an average day, said Deepfield.
The analysis includes computers and mobile devices as well as hundreds of varieties of game consoles, home media appliances and other embedded devices like Apple TV, Roku, Xbox 360 and mobile apps.
An extract from the study explains the growing influence Google has on many aspects of the web:
“While big data center construction projects and Google Fiber have dominated the headlines, far less attention has focused on Google’s growing and pervasive dominance throughout the underlying Internet infrastructure and economy. For example, Google analytics, hosting, and advertising play some type of role in over half of all large web services or sites today based on our ongoing study…”
The data focus primarily on North America and cover roughly one-fifth of the U.S. consumer Internet, making it “the largest ongoing study of its kind,” the group said in a blog post.
Deepfield co-founder Craig Labovitz attributed the rise to server growth at Google as well as the success of YouTube, Android and various Google cloud services such as Google Drive.
Only Netflix has larger bandwidth, Deepfield claims, but Netflix peaks last for only a few hours each evening during prime time hours and during Netflix cache update periods in the morning.
“The odds are, if you have an Internet-connected device, at the end of the day it will be exchanging information with a Google server,” Labovitz said in an interview.
“While it is old news that Google is big, the sheer scale and dominance of Google in the Internet infrastructure has significant implications on network design and evolution,” Deepfield said.
Deepfield’s results are based on an ongoing analysis of anonymised Internet backbone traffic across a large cross section of North America and multiple collaborating infrastructure and Internet providers.
Read the official Deepfield blog post here
