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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/23/google_earns_eight_million_dollars_from_gangnam_style/

'Op! Op! Op!' Gangnam Style earns Google $8m

De gustibus non est disputandum

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Media, 23rd January 2013 18:06 GMT

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Google has pulled in $8m from the over one billion YouTube views of Korean rapper – or K-pop entertainer, your call – Psy's Gangnam Style (강남스타일) video [1].

That stunning figure was revealed by Google senior VP and chief business officer Nikesh Arora [2] during Tuesday's conference call with analysts and reporters after Google released its fourth quarter earnings report [3], which also revealed that the company brought in a total of $14.42bn in revenues for that quarter and $50.2bn for all of 2012.

While Psy's überpopular ditty's ad-generated revenue might seem impressive at first blush, Gangnam Style accounted for a mere 0.016 per cent of Mountain View's calandar-year haul.

What's more, as Quartz notes [4], Psy's take of that $8m was a cool $4m – which, we can only assume, is a far higher percentage of his 2012 take-home than Google's remaining $4m.

Gangnam Style – the "Mairzy Doats [5]" of last year – has been viewed 1,233,872,169 times as of this writing, and surpassed [6] Justin Bieber's "Baby" last November as the most-watched video in YouTube history. As of this morning, the Canadian moppet's music video [7] lagged far behind 강남스타일 with a mere 823,774,667 views.

We'll leave it up to you, gentle reader, to divine what the popularity of those two song-and-dance acts reveal about the state of world culture. Your humble Reg reporter, however, would be more sanguine about global taste if the late Don Van Vliet's estate earned $4m for Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's heartfelt rendition of "Old Fart At Play [8]".

But alas, Old Fart videos have been viewed only around 15,000 times in their multiple YouTube iterations. Bieber and Psy – and Google – demonstrate a far better understanding of public predilections. ®