5 Minute Google Outage Estimated To Cost Google $545,000 In Revenue

Just how valuable is your time, really? Some lawyers and psychologists might charge a few hundred dollars an hour for their expertise, but when you take into consideration the Internet search giant Google’s recent 5 minute outage, the amount of revenue loss was pretty astronomical by any estimates. Last Friday, when Google went down from about 3:52 p.m. to 3:57 p.m Pacific Time, additional services also went offline alongside Google, but some simple mathematical calculations had resulted in an estimated $545,000 revenue loss for Google.

How was this particular figure derived from? Well, in Q2 this year, Google reported revenues of $14.1 billion. A little bit of basic division and that would translate to approximately $108,000 in revenue on average for a single minute that Google is up and running. $545,000 might sound like a drop in the ocean for a company like Google, but the average American household could certainly make do with such money at any moment – as that is what the average American household makes throughout a decade. Apart from that, the 5 minute outage is said to have caused a global drop in website traffic of up to 40% percent, before it spiked back to normal levels when Google was back online.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Google