Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continues to have the ambition of becoming the largest advertising company in the world. Well, at least that's the thought I have held for over two years now. Is it a coincidence that Google's online revenue growth in 2007 was larger than the combined advertising revenue of the 17 top offline media companies? No.

Henry Blodget, who couldn't be trusted as a Wall Street analyst (which is why he isn't one any longer), runs Silicon Alley Insider and contrasted Google's growth with media powerhouses Viacom, CBS and Clear Channel (among others). He came to the conclusion that Google is pounding up hard on the media landscape as it comes to taking ad revenue share from just about anyone in the business.

Blodget says: "A single media property, Google.com grew by $2 billion. All the offline media properties owned by the 13 offline media companies -- all of them -- grew by about $1 billion." After looking at the 13 other companies, it's not hard to imagine that Google beat them all -- combined. This isn't a surprise to me at all -- Google's foray into advertising isn't a mistake and the way it's taking market share is also not a mistake. In the U.S. alone, Google's ad revenue totaled about $8.7 billion for 2007 -- up 44% from 2006 revenue. That's 5.7% of $153.7 billion spent on advertising in the U.S. last year.