10 companies that control the internet

The world has never witnessed companies grow the way tech giants are growing today. Take Twitter for example. The company started in 2006 and valued close to $ 11 billion in just seven years.

While the people and businesses have benefitted from the growth and reach of these companies, their size gives them unparallel power.

Take Google for example. The internet major Google is facing probes by fair trade regulators in India, Europe and three other jurisdictions for alleged anti-competitive practices.

Authorities in Argentina, Brazil and Taiwan have also opened investigations into certain aspects of Google's business.

Competition has little chance to survive against such big companies that have billions of people using their services. The bigger they get, the more powerful they become.

Let take a look at the internet giants that get the highest number of visitors globally.

Source: Statista

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Sohu

Reach in the month of July: 318 million

Rank: 10

Sohu is a Chinese internet company that offers whole host of services including advertising, search engine, and on-line multiplayer gaming.

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Alibaba

Reach in the month of July: 318 million

Rank: 9

Albaba offers a variety of e-commerce services including business-to-business online web portals, online retail and payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services.

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Tencent

Reach in the month of July: 341 million

Rank: 8

Tencent and its group companies offer range of services including social networking, web portals, e-commerce, and multiplayer online games. It also offer mobile phone value-added services and operate online advertising services in China.

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Baidu

Reach in the month of July: 358 million

Rank: 7

Baidu is the Google of China. It offers many web services including a Chinese language-search engine, audio files, and images. According to Wikipedia, Baidu offers a total of 57 search and community services.

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Amazon

Reach in the month of July: 404 million

Rank: 6

Amazon is the largest online retailer that started as a website to shop for books. Over time the company has expanded the product categories. It also sells e-readers under the brand name Kindle and is a major provider of cloud computing services.

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Wikimedia Foundation

Reach in the month of July: 492 million

Rank: 5

Wikimedia Foundation is  charitable organisation that operates Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, WikimediaCommons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and many other online collaborative services.

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Yahoo

Reach in the month of July: 725 million

Rank: 4

The web portal Yahoo is globally known for services such as news, search engine, Yahoo Directory, email, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, fantasy sports, and other related services.

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Facebook

Reach in the month of July: 797 million

Rank: 3

The social networking website was stared in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow HarvardUniversity students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

Though the company has high number of visitors, it is yet to fully monetise its offering.

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Microsoft

Reach in the month of July: 878 million

Rank: 2

The company well-know for its operating system Windows, also run web services like other tech giants including its web portal MSN, email, video conferencing (Skype), search engine, Microsoft Office online, and many more.

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Google

Reach in the month of July: 1,209 million

Rank: 1

Google earns most of its revenue from advertisements related to search engine. It also has numerous other popular services including Google Docs, Google+, email services, Youtube and Google Maps.