How Top Tech Companies Make Their Billions

The Big Five tech companies—Apple, Amazon, Google (Alphabet)Microsoft, and Meta — generated $1.4 trillion combined in revenue last year alone. How do they make all this money? Let’s explore their main sources of income below.

The two main ways that big tech companies generate revenue are by selling you a product or advertising you as their own product to advertisers.

Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon are all companies that create physical or digital products in exchange for money. For example, 55% of Apple’s revenue comes from iPhone sales.

In contrast to companies like Amazon and Facebook, which make most of their money by selling you an actual product or service (respectively), Meta and Alphabet rely on advertising for your attention. Over 98% of Meta’s revenues come from Facebook ads while 81 percent comes directly in through Google products such as search engine optimization for websites that appear higher within results pages when users perform keyword searches related specifically t0 what they offer online.

It’s no surprise that revenues have skyrocketed for these companies. They each use a different sales strategy, but what they all share is ingenuity and hunger to make more money at any cost.

The Big Five’s revenue growth was notable in a time when so many are struggling.

It’s no secret that big tech has been on an unstoppable rise for years now. In 2019, before the global pandemic hit and economic challenges began to arise from it; their combined revenue grew by 12%. The following year was even more impressive as their combined revenue increased 19%, during a time when many other companies were seeing dipped profits or decreases in sales due entirely tothe pandemic’s affect on supply chains around the world. And finally – after three record-breaking fiscal quarters of growth–in 2021 we saw 27%, equaling2020’s figure.

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The companies thrived through economic turmoil and global chaos because of the societal changes triggered by COVID-19. The new laws ended up driving demand for their products, which is how these giants managed to continue growing throughout this time period when so many other businesses were laying off employees or going out of business entirely.
Society’s response following the pandemic impacted negatively worldwide and the economical effects  were devastating to many national economies. Especially economies that depended on tourism. The Pandemic also had some positive outcomes which included increased use of technology from big tech firms.

The combination of a lockdown and mass corporate relocation led to record e-commerce sales. The need for laptops skyrocketed as companies shut down traditional office spaces in order to remote work from home offices, propelling the market demand even greater for cloud services like Office 365 or Google Drive .

Technology is constantly changing, and now more than ever we need big tech companies like Google to stay on their toes. After all, the pandemic mandates that have occured because of COVID-19 restrictions have eased up in most countries.

The future of work looks bright for those who are willing to embrace remote positions. Two-thirds (66%) out of eight thousand global company employees surveyed said their organization would likely make this type of remote office a permanent option, and eCommerce sales are expected to grow steadily over the next few years possibly reaching $7 trillion by 2025.