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Google (mostly YouTube) accounts for a quarter of all North American internet traffic

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According to new data from analytics firm Deepfield (via Wired), Google services now account for an incredible 25% of traffic on all internet providers in North America. Not only is that significantly more than Netflix, it’s a huge increase from the approximately 6 percent Google held just three years ago. As noted in the report, Google now measures in at more than Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter combined, but mostly due to YouTube:

While big data center construction projects and Google Fiber have dominated the headlines, far less attention has focused on Google’s growing and pervasive dominance throughout the underlying Internet infrastructure and economy. For example, Google analytics, hosting, and advertising play some type of role in over half of all large web services or sites today based on our ongoing study.

When we last published some large-scale measurements in 2010, Google represented (a now seemingly small) 6% of Internet traffic. Today, Google now accounts for nearly 25% of Internet traffic on average. Only Netflix has larger bandwidth, but Netflix peaks last only for a few hours each evening during prime time hours and during Netflix cache update periods in the early morning.

In the graph above, Deepfield shows the average percentage of devices connecting to Google servers in North America at least once in a 24-hour period is over 60 percent:

An amazing 60% of all Internet end devices/users exchange traffic with Google servers during the course of an average day. This analysis includes computers and mobile device as well as hundreds of varieties game consoles, home media appliances, and other embedded devices (Google’s device share is much larger if we look only at computers and mobile devices).

As for how accurate the data is, Deepfield notes that it gathers data from not only browsers, but also from embedded devices like the Apple TV, Xbox 360 and mobile apps. That makes it “the largest ongoing study of its kind covering roughly 1/5 of the US consumer Internet.

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Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s weekly Logic Pros series and makes music as one half of Toronto-based Makamachine.