Google Inc. has gone from literally a garage company which started in 1998. The company was founded by two computer science graduates from Stanford University there are Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Google is an innovative company that employs more than 10, 000 employees as of 2006. The two actually met in 1995 and began formulating their initial ideas on searching which they tried to sell. When no interest was garnered for it, they decided to form Google and presented their search methods at a World Wide Web conference in 1998 and by 1999 had $30 million in funding from a variety of means. Google went public in 2004 raising $1. 6 billion. Google is so ‘ big’ it has become a new word in the English language meaning “ to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine”. Google views the internet as a means for sharing the entire world’s data and to allow users an easy and fast mechanism to access this data is its primary function. They see data in any form and every form and if the data is not currently digitized, they are working to make it so. Data can be from satellite transmission, national archives, patent information, libraries, video, radio, images, telephone and the internet. They have made data searchable from a website, from the computer, from an intranet, and on the internet. Google earns its money from a variety of means. Adwords – search based advertising space, Adsense – context based advertising service, customized searches for businesses, selling crawler data to Google network partners.
1. i) What problems and challenges does Google face in this case?
Google faces a problem called the “ Click Fraud” problem (Mohatt, 2009). Adwords was launched in 2000. It is Google’s flagship product and the main source of revenue. It is mainly about pay-per-click and site-targeted advertising. It offers advertising for websites in search results and Advertising based on keywords. Google Ads work by, click on any ad, the advertiser is charged by Google for click as this is pay per click type of ad.
Click fraud is Google and the advertisers gain when genuine and interested surfers click on the ads and then browse the ad page. But if some one will mal-intentions start clicking on the ads, it is called as click fraud problem (Simon Fusco, 2008). AdWords, advertising program has come under some fire recently for being weak to malicious forms of manipulation. Specifically, corrupt businesses can use a practice known as click-fraud to drive up the costs of their competitors’ ads and put them at a competitive disadvantage.
From the case, it appears that Google are very aware of the challenges and problems that they will be facing (Scott M. Fulton, 2010). They know that their success brings competition into their marketplace and that they will have to be continually looking for ways to make their product offerings more attractive to their users than those of their competitors. The challenge for Google will be holding onto its sense of self as it continues to grow and expand into new product areas. Brands that become generic terms always face a particular challenge: a cultural success can easily slip into a commercial failure through over familiarity. One of the biggest challenges for Google in future is Microsoft who is trying to build a strong grip in every section of internet.
ii) What people, organization, and technology factors are responsible for these problems and challenges?
People
The people factors that responsible to this problem are Click fraud. Click fraud can be done by competition. A competitor could click on ads so as to increase ad spending without any gains. Dissatisfied employees can click on their company ads to give vent to out their anger. Unsatisfied angry customers could do it to take revenge on any company. Political activists can do it to harm another party’s campaign or against the company.
Organization
The Organization factor that responsible to this problem is by demands and changes in the external environment in Economic, Stakeholders, and in Global. That must be constantly evaluated and responded. Resources may be an issue when dealing with Microsoft and the strategies they will take to overthrow Google.
Technology
The technology factor that responsible to this problem by Google Deploy technology in areas such as Deep Web and context awareness searches. It makes continual evolvement of rapid technological changes, in Google Android.
iii) Does Google’s business strategy effectively address these challenges? Explain your answer.
Google business strategy that effectively address to challenges is by, Google has launched a number of products and these products are not simply enhancements to their popular search engine. For example, they have produced a personalized search tool that takes into account a user’s previous searches when returning results. The cumulative effect is more relevant results.
They are constantly looking for new ways to grow and have added new products such as, adSense scans Web pages for target words and displays appropriate advertisements, enabling Web site operators to generate revenue from their sites. Google Toolbar enables Web surfers to search the Google Index, without visiting the Google home page. The toolbar also provides one of the Web’s earliest defenses against pop-up ads.
Google image search index has more than one billion images archived. Google Labs enables curious users to test out the company’s newest initiatives online while they are still in development. Google News is first Internet news service compiled completely by computer algorithms. Google News Alerts enables subscribers to receive customized news alerts by e-mail.
Google Desktop Search a downloadable program for searching personal files on a computer, including e-mail, productivity files, browsing history, and instant message conversations. Google Product Search is consumer product locator. Google Maps includes dynamic online mapping and satellite pictures of searchable addresses. Google Talk is provide free instant messaging and voice communication service for personal computers. Google Video allows users to search for and then purchase TV shows, sports broadcasts, file clips, and music videos.
2. i) How might a business owner benefit from the services offered by Google?
Benefits of the service offered by Google to a business are Google Apps services. Google Apps is a service from Google provides independently customizable versions of several Google products under a custom domain name. It features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including; Gmail, Google Groups, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites (Wikipedia, 2010).
Google are fully movement with their Google Apps for business offering. Google apps offer a number of benefits to business, the browser based applications give companies the freedom to innovate by taking advantage of the scalable nature of Cloud computing know as Internet-based computing (Bill St. Arnaud, 2010).
By Google apps service that helps business owned are the experts in delivering high quality email, messaging, and other web-based services while they focus on the needs of their users and their day-to-day business (Thomas Maguire, 2009). In business its assist organizations of all sizes face a common challenge of helping their users communicate and share information more effectively. It offers a suite of applications including email, calendar, text and voice calling and documents such, word processing, spreadsheet, presentation which helps increase productivity and enhances knowledge-sharing capabilities and collaboration within the business organization (F. Hussain, 2004).
ii) Which Google services or products would be attractive to you if you owner a business?
No longer just a search engine, Google has grown rapidly in recent years into a company that now offers a variety of tools and services, many of which are aimed squarely at business owners (Matt McGee, 2007). Some of Google’s most persuasive services are free, making them even more tempting to business owners on a firm budget.
The Google services that attractive me if I owner a business is Google Product search. Google Product search is a service from Google that makes it easy for online businesses to find information about Products for Sale Online. Google Product search is a prime means of free search engine marketing (Matt McGee, 2007). Google Product search is a price engine website launched by Google Inc. Google Product search is different from most other price engines in that it neither charges any fees for listings, no accepts payment for products to show up first. Also, it makes no commission on sales. Any company can submit product information (via a “ data feed”) and be included in the Google Product search engine (Heinz Duthel, 2008)
Otherwise, Advertising space is available businesses for purchase and able to displayed in Google Product search in the form of an AdWords ad (Heinz Duthel, 2008). Of all the paid sources of revenue for Google, Adwords generates more than 90% of the revenue (Greg Sterling, 2009). As such, the role of adwords in Google’s growth is very important. If Advertisers continue to option for AdWords and the ability of the ads increases in terms of the number of people clicking on the ads, Google will continue to show profits. This fact makes room for manipulations in the search results and paid ads in order to increase revenues.
The benefit by this service to business owned is Google Product search is worldwide user base performs more than hundred of millions searches a day (Neowave, 2009). These might be the people actively searching for the items you sell. That presents a giant opportunity to introduce your products to customers you might otherwise spend lots of money in advertising trying to reach..
iii) Why would you choose to use these particular products or services?
The reason that I choose Google Product search is not a store. There is no shopping cart, and can purchase anything in Google Product search. Google Product search is merely a “ yellow page” style site that links the consumer to a retail store’s web page where the item of interest may then be purchased (Michael Busby, 2004). In Google Product search list of stores, shops, and catalogs, only retail establishments are listed.
Thus, Google Product search builds its database seemingly apart and in a differing manner than the Google search engine that uses “ PageRank” (Google Inc, Annual Report, 2008). Google Product search builds its database using product information submitted electronically by the seller. Google Product search is a great concept, but Google’s primary implementation seems to be a software-driven engine that cannot discern search term meanings and product.
Google Product search is easy to use. Key in the keywords of interest, and the Google Product search will return nothing but businesses selling the items and all of its accessories that you’re seeking (Tom Krazit, 2010). Of course, you may still get more search results than any one person can view in a lifetime.
3. i) What are the pros and cons of a company like Google extending its reach into new industries?
The pros of Google extending into new industries due to Google Inc.’s recent increase of popularity, and its interminable technological advances to provide better user experiences, the company has developed a vital competitive advantage, the success of brand equity. Google has been able to distinguish its services from all others and has gained a high awareness, perceived quality, and brand loyalty (Lamb, Hair, & McDaniel, 2009) through it’s branding, which continues to make it the most frequently used search engine. Google will be better able to maintain its brand equity and preserve consumer loyalty.
Beside that, Google also has a range of innovative additional services like Images, Groups, Directory, and News (Adam, 2008). Google didn’t complicate its website by making itself a portal and rather it kept tabs for these services on its homepage so users can easily navigate and that also keeps the website as simple as it was earlier. The Google brand has an image of being honest and fair which pros by the company’s business philosophy. Google similar to be fair, meaning they decline to make money from end to end search result ranking or enclosure (Botella, M, 2006). All of the advertising has to be on the right of the page, none is the actual search results.
The pros Google to reach into new industries, Google are not biased towards advertisers (Adam, 2008). It clearly separates relevant advertisements and actual results by giving “ Sponsored Links” tag to sponsored results when user searches to get information with some keyword. Moreover, it also ranks sponsored links to keep most relevant sponsored links on the top.
Next pros are Google’s advertising program. AdWords, enables businesses to display their products and services as links that appear in search results relevant to the consumer’s search (Rachel Brown, 2009). Businesses are then only required to pay if their ads are clicked on, and with a world-renowned site such as Google, it is easy to comprehend how often a business. Another pro is by cost savings. In addition to this, as an extra facility AdWords provides Discounter which automatically reduces the actual cost-per-click and the consumer have to pay the lowest cost needed to maintain advertising position on the result page, which is a cost saving facility provided by Google.
The cons or drawback for Google to reach into new industries are Google’s technology compromises the privacy of users through different sources such as Gmail, an email server that stores messages where users cannot permanently delete (Swartz, 2004). Gmail has not been considered the only cons in compromising privacy, but Google Search as well. Google Inc, is experimenting with a new feature that enables users of its online search engine to see all of their past search requests and results, creating a computer ‘ peephole’ that could prove helpful as well as embarrassing (Google Service, 2005). Because Google Search is still highly popular, it has built Google into a distinctive competency, by transmission value to their consumers through free use of Gmail and Google Search. But because of defects in technology, Google could and will lose customers drastically if changes are not made.
Other cons that contests Google’s ideal reputation is the filtering of material supplied. Filtering varying items such as images and text has been insufficient on Google’s part. Competitors such as AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft came forward with their search results and websites URLs that were requested for analyzing filters, but Google withdrew, believing that it would impose on its users’ privacy and trade secrets (U. S. Demands, 2006).
ii) How does Google’s growth affect consumers?
Google growth affects consumers by the biggest advantage of the Google search engine is perhaps the sheer number of sites it indexes. In 1998 Google indexed 26 million sites, in the year 2000 that number grew to 1 billion sites and today Google is said to have over a trillion (1, 000, 000, 000, 000) websites indexed ( Michael Dougherty, 2010). As a user of the Google search engine, is a much better chance of finding, not only the information want, but a wide variety of sources that offer this information. Compare this to only having access to a smaller subset of this information indexed by alternative search engines and can see why Google search leads the pack when it comes to internet search engines.
Thus, Google development affect consumers by one of growth it is Google Maps, meanwhile, revolutionized mapping. (Mark Hachman, 2008). Google Maps offered scalability, and above all, driving directions. Google Map is Simplicity. The consumer GPS industry should be grateful it with Google Maps, consumers would have essentially recognized its value. Nevertheless, an entire ecosystem has sprung up around the Google Maps API, allowing users to tag and locate services in relation to their physical location, which is just another parameter for Google to search.
iii) How does it impact the business world?
To estimate the business impact of The Google web search engine is the company’s most popular service. According to market research published by comScore, 2009, Google is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65. 6% (Google Inc, 2009). Google indexes trillions of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Despite criticism, the basic search engine has spread to specific services as well, including an image search engine, the Google News search site, Google Maps, and more. In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which allowed users to upload, search, and watch videos from the Internet (Tyler, Nathan, 2007). In 2009, however, uploads to Google Video were discontinued so that Google could focus more on the search aspect of the service (Cohen, Michael, 2009). The company even developed Google Desktop, a desktop search application used to search for files local to one’s computer.
4) How successful do you think Google will be in the future?
In point of view Google will successful in the future. Name Google is one almost everyone in the world will have heard of. Not only are the co-founders incredibly wealthy from the success of Google, but the company itself is also incredibly profitable, with the quarter between April and June of this year seeing a turnover of $5. 7 billion, $1. 25billion of which was net profit (Dave Parrack, 2008).
Google started out as a company completely dedicated to enabling an easier way for people to search the Web, but is now one of the most successful technology companies, and offers a range of products far beyond engineering the most simple and honest search engine in existence (MG Siegler, 2010).
Not that the simplicity of the Google search engine should be seen as a bad thing. After all, people now don’t search the Web, they Google it, and the algorithm to search the Internet and organize the results in the most user-friendly way has revolutionized the Web (Dave Parrack, 2008).
Google has had a mightily impressive first 10 years, going from being just the essential part of an idea between two undergraduates to being a company ranking next to such giants as Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple. The New York Times has a brilliant set of comparisons between where Google is at now and where Microsoft was at the same age.
Google has come a long way in its first decade, but there is surely much more to come. According to BBC News (2010), the trio in charge of Google, CEO Eric Schmidt, and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin has made a pact to stay together for at least 20 years, meaning the company is likely to go from strength to strength over the course of the next decade or more.
While search is still the backbone of the company’s success, Google is also reaching out to other segments of the technology world. There’s Android, the mobile phone platform, Chrome, its new cloud computing-style Web browser, and a whole range of applications wrapped up in Google Apps which could help revolutionize the way we all organize and share content on the Internet (Google, 2010).
Google at present has the major share of this market; however Microsoft and other market entrants will be a major threat to them (Sujan Sarkar, 2008). The Microsoft Corporation has very “ deep pockets” and will stop at nothing to overturn and destroy Google’s competitive advantage. Legal and regulatory compliance will be a major issue as this market grows and more concerns are expressed from the external environments. In order to be competitive in the video rentals segment, Google will need to develop expertise in order to enter favorable negotiations with content providers.
Conclusion
Google will continue to develop its worldwide domination of all aspects of the internet, search, multimedia and telecommunications industries. As the industries and the market decides what will happen with televisions, computers, telephones, gaming devices, musical equipment and data transmission, Google will be ready on all fronts with the products and services that are needed to be successful. They will continue to enhance news, mail, chatting, voice messages, blogs, forums and information sharing of any kind with seamless integration of the products and services.
The corporate culture remains open and free flowing with strong connections to youth, well versed Information Technology veterans in the industry and educational resources, they should not have a problem with their intentions to the outside world and their customer base. The size of the company may eventually make it seem too powerful and make it more difficult to manage.
This new ground of storage, manipulation and usage of possibly sensitive or personal data over the internet to a variety of output sources is continuing to grow into something to not trust and to evaluate continually. The fact that it is more than a simple data base but a search engine that seemingly may become a device of artificial intelligence is nothing to ignore. Google will have to continue to address the privacy issues from all aspects and be strong supporters of standards for privacy.
Google’s approach of making fast internet services available to the general public and also bring archival data to the forefront of our society is an incredible long reaching enterprise. It is interesting that historical research will greatly benefit from the undertakings of a high technology company. Google seems to simply want to share and make available all relevant data for anyone who wants it and without restriction or censorship. As Google continues to grow it will be hard for other companies to compete with them. The company seems to be well prepared and solid in all areas of data use and have the staunch support of many organizations and individuals who want to use their services.
