During 2007 the number of advertisers doing business with Internet giant Google reached 1 million, in the first  official disclosure of what had been a tightly held secret to come from the Mountain View, California-based company, according to a December 2008 application filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Previous informal advertiser counts from Google, which operates the most-used Internet search engine worldwide, listed the total only as "hundreds of thousands." SEC Filing Points To Possible 2008 Revenue Figures The 1 million figure disclosed offered a more accurate view of the yearly progression of advertisers doing business with Google, adding to previous annual figures of 89,000 in 2003, 201,000 in 2004, 360,000 in 2005 and 600,000 in 2006, and pointed to a current Google advertiser number likely to be in the 1.3 million to 1.5 million range according to some industry analysts who reviewed the SEC filings. The SEC filing was made in a December 15 application asking for a waiver from financial rules similar to exemptions rival firm Microsoft received in 1988 and Yahoo in 2000, a process Google initiated in July 2006 and may not see a ruling on for some time, as the agency said that it has not set a timetable for considering the Google request. Were Google to at present have advertisers numbering between 1.3 million and 1.5 million as some analysts have estimated, the search giant's revenues for 2008 could likely rest within a range between $20.8 billion and $24 billion and would represent an increase of between 26 percent and 45 percent from the $16.5 billion Google brought in during 2007, however Google has not disclosed the number of its current advertisers, and with the economy in a recession those numbers could eventually be proven to be overly optimistic. Google Advertiser Numbers Reached 1 Million During 2007 The December filing, a portion of which remained confidential due to Google's contention that it contains trade secrets, also revealed that the average advertiser doing business with the search firm spent slightly more than $16,000 annually on Google, an amount that varied only a small amount during a five year span since 2003. Google's success has been driven largely by offering publishers advertisements from the largest pool of  competing advertisers, using an ad-matching system that many industry observers view as the most accurate among those offered by the top five search engine firms. Google said that it had 24,400 employees in the filing, including 4,300 contractors, temporary workers and interns, further information welcomed by investors eager to learn any new details about Google, which has been notorious in releasing what some industry analysts view as spartan quantifiable figures aside from those required by U.S. law. Google's disclosure of 2007 advertisers reaching 1 million was seen by as a strong sign by some analysts that the company has room for future growth in its advertiser base. Related Links :
| 
