Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) AdSense, which has made tens of billions of dollars for online sites, large and small, celebrated its 10th birthday. The ad system allows publishers to easily run ads on their sites and get payments from Google for the placement. Google takes a portion of the revenue. For small publishers that have no means to sell their own ads, AdSense may be their only chance to bring in advertising revenue. It essentially has revolutionized the industry by allowing sites that could not remain in business to have some modest sales.

The firm announced:

Ten years ago we launched AdSense to help publishers earn money by placing relevant ads on their websites. I can still remember the excitement and anticipation as AdSense went live that first day. Our small team huddled together in a cramped conference room, and right away we saw that publishers were as excited about AdSense as we were.

Fast-forward 10 years, and AdSense has become a core part of Google’s advertising business. The AdSense community has grown to include more than 2 million publishers, and last year alone, publishers earned more than $7 billion from AdSense. AdSense is a community that thrives because of all the content creators we are so fortunate to partner with. Their stories inspire us to do our part to make AdSense great.

On this occasion, it’s especially inspiring to hear the stories of partners who have been with us since the very beginning — like a retiree in New Zealand who was able to pursue her dream of writing about her garden, a tech support expert in Colorado who can spend more time with his kids, and a theme park reviewer who now sends employees around the world to test and review rides — all thanks to money earned from AdSense.

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