Published on June 7th, 2018 | by Sunit Nandi

See How Big the 47 Largest Internet Companies Are Today

The meaning of the statement “The 47 largest companies” has changed considerably when Internet entered the equation.

Before the late 1990s, names such as “Coca-Cola” and “General Electric” would automatically and undisputedly have been on the list, if not on top of the list.

Unfortunately for manufacturers of tangible consumer products such as foods, clothes, etc, they can be “digital” only in as far as they are able to do “digital marketing or pay SEO optimising specialists to do it for them

Today’s internet companies can stand their ground against the biggest and best of the trade world. Some companies have taken less than 20 years to outgrow very large companies such as Walmart (a physical retail company), which was outgrown by Amazon (a digital retailer) in 2015 already.

Not only was Apple the largest tech company in 2017, but also outright the 9^th largest company in the world. Considering the vast percentage of the Apple group of Companies that works with digital marketing, one can safely assume that Apple’s true fortune lies in the fact that it not only sells and manufactures hardware and software, but also has a few great stakes in Social Media. Apple moved towards Social- and digital marketing in 2014.

The above will give you an idea of the extent of the influence that digital marketing and the internet have had on the global economy so far… and the best is yet to come…

Interestingly enough, the first workable prototype of the internet, called the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), was established in the late 1960s. It was a tool developed to aid communication between computers on a single network. ARPANET began to expand in 1983 when they adopted TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, a communications model that set standards for data-transmission between multiple networks).

At that stage most of us did not even know about the existence of any technology that could transmit data between networks or computers. A movie such as “The Net”, starring Sandra Bullock and released in 1995, would have been considered highly speculative sci-fi in those days.

When computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990, it became more recognisable as internet, and it was only in 1998, following an eight-year long history of the establishment of several small additions such as The Archie search engine (created in 1990 by Alan Emtage), Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill) and more, that the internet began to gain momentum.

Yahoo published its directory in 1994, but only added a search engine in 2002. Ask Jeeves, a search engine that ranked links according to their popularity and later became Ask.com, was released in 1997.

In 1998, Google entered the scene, and everything changed. People began to recognise the potential of internet, and more specific, digital marketing. And when Facebook bowed in, Social Media began to gallop into a bright new future. Google now has 2 billion users on Android alone.

Ever since, the internet expanded at a pace that can hardly be followed. Companies such as Amazon, Apple (Android – ICloud –Apple Pay – etc), Facebook, etc, are growing by the minute:

Facebook started off in February 2004 as a small app that was developed by Mark Zuckerberg as a university app only. Today, with more than 1.8 billion daily active users, it is the no 1 social network in the world in 129 countries out of 137. This was achieved in just 14 years.

Instagram, which was established in October 2010 mainly for sharing photos and videos, boasts 500 million users per day, and is an asset of Facebook.

Twitter was originally created as an sms-based communications program and was launched in March 2066. Today, after just 12 years, Twitter distributes around 500 million tweets per day.

Snapchat is kind of a combination of Instagram and Twitter. It uses features of both. Snapchat was launched in September 2011, and has 191 million daily active users.

Youtube came into being in February 2005 for the purpose of sharing videos across the Globe, and is a subsidiary of Google; YouTube has 1.3 Billion active daily users, and around 5 billion videos are shared via YouTube on a daily basis.

Pinterest began in March 2010 as a site where users can pin stuff such as photos and articles for the purpose of sharing them with others. Pinterest has in excess of 200 million daily active users.

Tumblr is a site for very short blog posts, preferably no more than one paragraph. It was launched in 2007 and has around 23 Million active daily users.

There are several sites that offer cloud storage, such as Google Drive, Mega, Dropbox, Box.com, Microsoft Skydrive, ICloud and more. This a concept by which you can store your personal data on the internet, or “in the cloud” as it is popularly termed. It is debatable whose idea it really was, and the number of users differ from site to site.

Airbnb is a company that does online accommodation reservations. It works like seat reservations, but deals in accommodation and not seats for flights.

Other companies that do online reservations are: Booking.com, TripAdviser, Skyscanner, Momondo, and more.

Uber and Lyft are two transport companies that also make use of online bookings, but for their particular services. Both of these companies also offer job opportunities for people with driver’s licenses that would like to use their car as a source of income.

Yandex, Baidu and Bing are internet browsers/search providers.

WhatsApp and Skype are two messaging apps that can be used either on pc or phone. Both apps offer in-app phone facilities. WhatsApp has recently been taken over by Facebook. Skype is a Microsoft app. Each has user totals in the billions.

Tinder and Happn are online dating sites for singles.

Amazon and Ebay and Groupon are similar in that both offer products for sale. Ebay and Groupon are a bit more interactive than Amazon but they will have to spark to beat Amazon’s professionality.

Paypal, Apple Pay and Square are all sites where you can have an account for making and receiving global online payments. Square differs from the other two in that their app can turn your device into a credit card accepting point of sale.

Other large internet companies that are making their mark are Bitcoin, Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, Twitch, Pokémon Go, Steam and several Game software companies, Crowdfunding Companies and more. Follow this link to read more.

Credits: Betipy.com

Tags: big, companies, Internet, largest, today

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.