Google–About to Overtake ITV

It’s easy to forget that as well as being an extraordinarily innovative firm, Google is also rapidly becoming Britain’s biggest advertising business. The latest figures–released on Thursday evening–show how rapidly it is growing in the U.K., earning $803 million (about £407m) in the first three months of 2008, about 40% up on a year ago. Let’s put that into context. Last year, ITV’s net advertising revenue was £1.5 billion. So, even if you just multiply Google’s earnings by four and assume no further growth this year, Britain’s biggest commercial television business–the original “license to print money”–is about to be overtaken by an American upstart which only arrived in the U.K. in 2001.

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