People like paying for news — especially when it’s the New York Times.

The publisher’s online subscription business, embarked upon somewhat sheepishly in 2011, has now cultivated over 2.2 million paying readers. An additional 400,000 or so pay for the Times’ standalone Crossword and Cooking apps.

But what’s particularly noteworthy is how quickly the business has grown. The paper brought in $340 million in online subscriptions for 2017, a 46 percent spike over the previous year. Even more impressive: that’s also the average annual growth rate since the paywall started in 2011. That equals Facebook, which grew its business 47 percent last year, and it’s much faster than Google, which grew at a 23 percent clip. The Times’ overall digital business, by the way, is growing by 30 percent, altogether faster than Google.

Of course, those comparisons are a bit of a feint. Both businesses dwarf the Times. But it’s still apt since A) it is Facebook and Google that have been eating away the news business, and B) the Times, a 166-year-old establishment known for being stubbornly and decorously staid, often to the point of self-defeat, is now growing like a Silicon Valley behemoth.

Wall Street noticed, sending the Times’ stock up today as much as 14 percent after the company released its quarterly earnings report. The paper as a whole is now worth $4 billion, which is good news for the Ochs-Sulzberger family that controls the Times, since it owns about 11 percent of its equity.

The family appointed 37-year-old Arthur Gregg Sulzberger to take over as publisher at the start of this year, following in his father’s footsteps. Along with his cousins Sam Dolnick and David Perpich, the trio have firmly taken hold of the paper’s strategy.

It appears to be working.

But let’s cut to the last page. The future of the Times — and of every news publisher — is digital, and the Times aims to create an $800 million digital business by 2020. You could argue it is being smartly ambitious by necessity.

Last year, the Times’ online revenue grew 30 percent to $578 million — like we had predicted in November. When including the Times’ Wirecutter business, led by Perpich, the company booked $607 million in total digital sales for the year. That’s about 2.5 times what it was in 2011, which means there’s a very good chance it’ll hit $800 million soon, possibly before 2020.