Google Ireland’s revenues jump 34% to €64.8bn

Revenues at Google’s Irish subsidiary grew in 2021, driven by stronger advertising revenues.

Staff numbers also increased at Google Ireland Ltd despite a midyear change that saw more than 300 staff move to a new cloud-focused entity.

Google Ireland Ltd’s turnover rose €16.4 billion to €64.8 billion last year, driven by an increase in search queries and continued growth in advertiser activity within Google’s Search service and YouTube.

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Gross profit for the year was €50.5 billion compared with €36.4 billion a year earlier.

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Pretax profit was largely unchanged at €2.84 billion, down slightly from the €2.85 billion in 2020 as administrative costs rose. The company paid a total of €395.8 million in tax for the year.

The company recorded €47.8 billion in administrative expenses, up from €33.6 billion the prior year. The rise in expenses was attributed to an increase in royalties paid to group undertakings and an increase in sales and marketing efforts across the EMEA region.

Cost of sales also rose, by €2.4 billion, which is primarily down to traffic acquisition costs paid to Google Network Members and distribution partners. This was offset by a reduction in some operating fees paid to fellow group undertakings.

The 2020 accounts included the contribution from Google’s cloud operations but in 2021 the company formed a dedicated entity for that business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, called Google Cloud EMEA.

This saw all Google Cloud and Google Workspace accounts, as well as contracts of customers, partners and partners with a billing address in EMEA, move from Google Ireland Ltd and Google Commerce Ltd to Google Cloud EMEA Ltd. Separate accounts for the new Google Cloud EMEA entity showed turnover of almost €2.3 billion and pretax profit of €3.7 million.

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The change also impacted the employee number at Google Ireland. The accounts showed the tech giant employed 4,214 people at the end of last year, down 100 from 2021 figures.

When the transferred staff were taken into account, it showed employment at the firm rose by about 250 over the year overall. Google earlier this year said it was continuing to hire staff for key roles but was growing staff numbers at a slower rate.

The group’s wage bill increased to €560 million with the total cost of staff, including pensions, social contributions and share-based compensation, at just under €800 million for the year. This includes €1.3 million related to staff bonuses, down from €2 million in 2020.

“We have continued to invest in Ireland as the headquarters of our business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa,” a spokeswoman for Google said. “That business continued to see sustained growth in 2021.”