assignment7
Google
“.. Its performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world ... For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance ... For Wall Street, it may be the IPO that changes everything (again) ... But Google is also a case study in savvy management -- a company filled with cutting-edge ideas, rigorous accountability, and relentless attention to detail ... Here's a search for the growth secrets of one of the world's most exciting young companies -- a company from which every company can learn...”
Profile..
Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related
to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking,
and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same
technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View,
California. As of March 31, 2009, the company has 20,164 full-time employees. Google
was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford
University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on
September 4, 1998. The initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004,
raising US$1.67 billion, implying a value for the entire corporation of US$23
billion. Google has continued its growth through a series of new product developments,
acquisitions, and partnerships. Environmentalism, philanthropy and positive employee
relations have been important tenets during the growth of Google. The company has been
identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine's #1 Best Place to Work, and as the most
powerful brand in the world (according to the Millward Brown Group). Google's mission
is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
" The unofficial company slogan, coined by former employee and Gmail's first engineer
Paul Buchheit, is "Don't be evil". Criticism of Google includes concerns regarding the
privacy of personal information, copyright, and censorship.
Competitiveness….
Google is particularly known for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. In January 2007, it was cited by Fortune Magazine as the #1 (of 100) best company to work for. Google's corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including, "You can make money without doing evil", "You can be serious without a suit," and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available on Google's website. Google's relaxed corporate culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google logo.Google has been criticized for having salaries below industry standards. For example, some system administrators earn no more than $35,000 per year – considered to be quite low for the Bay Area job market. However, Google's stock performance following its IPO has enabled many early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. Google implemented other employee incentives in 2005, such as the Google Founders' Award, in addition to offering higher salaries to new employees. Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, and strong brand recognition have also attracted potential applicants.After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt, requested that their base salary be cut to $1.00. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because, "their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google. As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests." Prior to 2004, Schmidt was making $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each earned a salary of $150,000.[63]They have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. In a 2007 report of the United States' richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin and Larry Page were tied for #5 with a net worth of $18.5 billion each.
Competitors..
1.Yahoo! Inc.
2. Pvt1 (MSN) – Privately held
3. AOL, Inc.
4. Industry (Internet Information Provider)
5. Disney Online
Uniqueness…
Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.
Google doesn’t answer to any external power. They don’t have anyone they have to deliver a product to. There is no contract with a deadline. Due to not having any external dependencies, Google can continuously iterate over a product until it reaches a state of near perfection. It can stay in internal testing as long as Google wants and no one is going to care. See Gmail, Google Maps, etc. This then allows Google to use the perfect form of the agile process. Continuous iterations and testing and development, continues improvement. Then as Google sees fit, release the products. As they get better and better, more people use them and more money from ads come in. It’s beautiful.
It’s also unlikely any other company is going to be able to pull this off. Google hit on the formula for ads before anyone else. They now have such a commanding lead in that arena that to compete with them you need deep pockets of money of your own. That makes it difficult to launch a company and follow Google’s lead of avoiding external dependencies and having the near perfect product development process.
At this point, you might be screaming at me that I’m wrong, because Google does have external contracts, especially for serving up ads on other sites. But notice that Google’s contracts are different from most companies’ contracts. Google isn’t developing a product for these companies. All they are doing is giving them an existing product that Google has already completed and released. Development on that product might still be happening, but it happens within Google, not within the realms of the contract. Google is still free to develop how ever they want.
For almost everyone else, you’re going to have to create a product and then drive sales of that product or else sign a contract and then deliver a custom product to the customer. You’ll have external dependencies that will force an outside reality upon you that Google simply doesn’t have. You can argue that Google is dependent upon ads, but at this point Google has captured such a large share of that market and is steadily capturing more of it, that it really isn’t a dependency for Google. Sure, Google should probably diversify, just in case the ad market tanks, but at this point Google has so much money they can afford to take their time.
So now you see. It’s unlikely you or anyone else is going to emulate Google. Kiss that dream goodbye.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from Google. Copy the good things that Google does and adapt them to your business. What you shouldn’t do is force the practices of Google on your business simple because they are what Google does. Google is a product of a very specific evolution and your business will be the product of a different evolution.
And when your developers come to you and say that they want to be exactly like Google, you now have an argument to explain why your business can’t be exactly like Google.
Still, there’s nothing preventing you from being the next great company after Google. That prize is still there for the taking.
New services offer…
1. New Storage Service
Google Inc has announced its very own cloud-based online storage service which will allow Google Docs users to upload any type of file of up to 250 MB while they will have access to a total storage capacity of 1GB.
(14 January, 2010, by Desire Athow)
2. Google Nexus One
Yesterday Google wasn’t in the business of selling mobile phones. Today, they are. The Nexus One smartphone has arrived and on sale at Google.com/phone.
(January 5th 2010 by Michael Arrington)
3. Google Click-to-Call (Billing) in Ads on Mobile Devices
Google sent out notification to its AdWords advertisers that this month “your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”
(Jan 5, 2010 at 7:59am ET by Greg Sterling)
4. Google Goggles
A new service that promises to make searching the internet as easy as taking a photo. The application, which will premier on Android devices, will let a user snap a photo of anything and then Google will deliver search results based on that image.
(December 7th, 2009 by Stefan Constantinescu)
5. Free DNS Service
Google just released their newest service which is public DNS. DNS is one of the most important services when it comes to using the internet. The main reason to use the service is reliability, speed and increased security. Google has put in other measures to help with overall security.
http://searchengineland.com/google-to-introduce-click-to-call-billing-in-ads-on-mobile-devices-32831
http://www.programmersparadox.com/2008/03/17/googles-unique-advantage/
http://www.serverninjas.com/free-dns-service-offered-by-google
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=GOOG
http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/1/14/microsoft-teases-google-over-new-storage-service/
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