Google’s Data Footprint Will Blow Your Mind

Seriously, they have a f*** ton of data!

Photo by Ian Battaglia on Unsplash

It should come as no surprise that Google stores and processes a lot of data but have you ever wondered how much data they actually have?

If you list some of the services and companies associated with Alphabet (Google’s parent company) you’ll end up with something like this:

• Google Search
• YouTube
• Gmail
• Google Maps
• Android
• Google Photos
• Google Play (store, videos, music)
• Nest (including Google smart home devices)
• Google Analytics and AdSense
• Google Docs, Sheets, Slides

This list feels like it could go on forever…

Each of these services is used by millions of people and generate an insane amount of data, so let’s see if we can figure out how much.

How Much Data Does Google Search Handle?

To start with, let’s just look at Google Search alone. Search is Google’s core product and a lot of the data obtained through Search makes its way back into the other services. If we can understand the size of Search…