Case Analysis: Google Inc. (2010) : The Future of The Internet Search Engine
Case Analysis: Google Inc. (2010) : The Future of The Internet Search Engine
1. Executive Summary 2
Reference
Case Analysis: Google Inc. (2010) The Future of the Internet Search Engine Page 1
I. Executive Summary
The present case study is based upon the strategic analysis of Google Company on the
basis of its potential profitability, successors & failures in the industry. The case also highlights
its problems statement and its causes, business strategies adopted by its major competitors,
operation management, its financial position, and human resources strategy. And then the
descriptive SWOT of Google is also discussed accordingly. The case concludes shortly with
industry, Google may be selected the alternative strategies namely defending current market
share, market modification and product modification. Therefore, above points are discussed
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, until now this company is
a giant internet search engine. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and
In 2010, Google was the global leader in technology for the ways that let people obtained
or accessed the information through using its search engine on the internet. There are many
growth to the future. Moreover, there are many risks, issues, and causes for the business
operation of Google to the national and international market on its products and services. For
the statement of the problem, there are divided into primary and secondary issues to be
The Google’s industry was changed rapidly with having good performance in business
growth, and it can be said that this company is classified as one giant company in the global
Case Analysis: Google Inc. (2010) The Future of the Internet Search Engine Page 2
market. Reading through the case study, it can understand clearly about Google’s issue during
its standing in the potential competitive market as stated. There are some key problems that
The strong competition with other companies in technology that was barrier for
The expected revenue growth rate may soon decrease because of direct and
indirect competition, the maturity of online advertising market, and growing size
of firms.
Google has quickly grown incredibly large due to its ability to efficiency settle
needs for data access to a large and growing customer base. The question can ask
that “Is a monopoly ever a good thing? If there is one best way to search for data,
should the search industry be allowed to fall into this growth pattern or should it
The liability still uncertain and take risk for the operation of Google both USA
It existed the issue in worldwide not only the firms in USA that are respected and
held accountable the law but other countries must follow, it is the barrier of
business.
controls and cultural barriers still take risk for international dealings.
Privacy over the Internet is a serious industry issue and there are no industry
Current laws are introducing for the protection of illegal access to data. Example,
hackers and others who take information and use it for identity theft or define for
consumers. It is the ways that a business will use their financial, health and
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banking information that they have given a company (HIPPA and Children
Privacy act these laws have nothing to do with companies that take a personal
Patent, trademark, or copyright infringement against the Google operation and lost profits
in the market.
The US and international laws restricted the distribution of materials that harmful
The management increased the regulatory scrutiny and put legal issue for concern.
It has a pressure from the government to censor its web content varied among
countries.
The management finds the new and creates innovative ways to maintain a strong
corporation culture.
It could lose its trademarks on the name due to threating trademarks and secrets
Invalid click or click fraud made the company lose confidence from its
advertisers/marketers.
Google has a relationship with the federal US government for data access, how
this impact possible legislation and the public perception of fair practices will.
2.4 Identify and link the symptoms and root causes of the problems
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International Market: different countries different accounting practice that let to
Lack capture China the leader in internet usage, especially by using its main
Internet access providers may be able to block, degrade or charge for access certain
people with information on the web and provide them relevant advertising such as
Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. is the strongest competition for Google. The
management of Google introduced new products and services to attract and retain
the users through usefulness search result, features, availability, ease of usage, and
In front of international market expansion for Google products and services, there
always has a pressure to Google in censoring its web content. Example, the
management agreed to censor some of its internet search results to china website in
2006.
The intellectual property right was the issue for the Google’s management to
defense the web contents and other copyright material without fraud that it may be
Case Analysis: Google Inc. (2010) The Future of the Internet Search Engine Page 5
The Google’s management recognized that the future profit margins may be
members.
Google spread its operation across the world to dominate in foreign currencies to
gain profitability.
Bases on the statement of problem above, the main problem for Google management is
how to make the company gain best performance in products and service, and expansion the
market in the globe with the strong competitive industry for the future?
Google has good brand name in internet search engines market. Google now is on its way
to achieve on Internet engine giant in the world. The revenue in 2009 obtained $23, 651 million
and $29,321 million in 2010 equal to 12.9% and 13.4% that is the high revenue. In 2009, stock
price gained $619.98 per share but the Google’s stock prices indicated that it has dropped 4.7%
in 2010 that this company worked hard in maintain the performance of developing and selling
the services and products more profitability in the competitive global market. Indeed, the
growing for Google lets this company to purchase other companies like YouTube,
DoubleClick, and Postini for merge and expanse service and products. It was not additional
revenue for Google since purchased YouTube with earned $1.6 billion in 2006 acquisition. In
2007, Google had revenues of $16.6 billion which grew an average of 115% annually in the
preceding five years. In this situation, Google’s main competitors, Yahoo, and Microsoft
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showed its revenues of $7.0 billion and $51.1 billion respectively. Hence, look at the financial
situation of Google seems to be lower that these two merged companies in market share.
The business growth of Google position in the strong competition with others companies
around the global especially the companies who serve on traditional and vertical search engine,
e-commerce sites, social networks, other forms of advertising, mobile applicants, and other
providers of online products and services. Although, Google stays in the highest level, Yahoo
is the strong competitor and position in the market, is getting stronger since it emerged with
Microsoft. The objective of Yahoo is to expand through new search technology (Panama) that
is attracting to users of Google and others users. Competing search engines such as Bing or
Yahoo developed their infrastructure to match the speed and comprehensiveness that Google
In order to make the sales growth and compete with the competitors, Google spends
billions of dollars for development /R&D and upkeep however the cost is high but it is the
building advanced infrastructure for Google. That is the comparative advantage over its
competitors. In addition, the rapid speed of search on internet let the user comeback and
satisfying with the products and service of Google. However the management of Google tried
to move the company, there maybe increase the difficulty in the future to compete with others
companies.
Google develops products that enhance people’s ability to access online information.
Although the management of Google has a good operation in USA and other countries in its
business but this company faced the difficulty and uncertainty in operate the business as good
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example in China because there are some limited free speech on the web. Other hand, the limit
informational and law still challenged to operation in some countries. It is a trade barrier for
Google in providing the service and information because it is the most successful exports of
Google. So, it is also very hard for meeting the needs of users because of government of each
Google has experience in well managed employees in its organization around the world.
In 2009, Google had 19,835 employees and this company depended mainly on the skilled
employees. However there was a recession in the past that make more difficult to attract and
maintain skilled, and talented employees Google provided to its employer with strong
satisfaction. Look in the past of Google, in 2002, Google hired former Sun Microsystems
executive Eric Schmidt to assume the role as Chairman and, later in the same year, CEO. On
August 28, 2006, Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was appointed to the board. Brin and Page
are the cofounders and key corporate resource of Google. Google has a good corporate culture
among the employee with rewards system or bonus that was the retaining the high performance
employees. It was seen that there has an excellent management of Google, but in front of the
world recession and other problems let the management of this company to lay of the
employees as history of Google’s operations. In 1 April 2008, it was lay of lay off around 25%
of Double Click employees and in 26 November 2008 Google continued layoffs its 10000
contractual part time jobs being cut. And in 4 January 2009, Google decided to lay off 100
recruiters, with close engineering offices. At the same year, 26 March Google cut 'just under'
200 positions. This was the flow of skilled workers out from Google but it cannot assure to
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3.2 Situational Analysis
Google is the biggest company and gets the strong recognition brand name in the world
which has three primary groups served namely: Users, Advertisers, and Google Networks
Members and Other Content Providers. The main categories of products and services provides
by Google including search engine and personalizations, clients, Google Geo, Android and
Google mobile, Google checkout and Google labs. Google has integrated with many websites
for improve its products search and catalogs and as well as integrated with radio advertising.
In 2007, Google purchased DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash for its attractive users. Google
made acquisitions internationally and domestic to continue to add its products to every means
of communications and data interaction available. The Google’s market size and growth rate
The fiscal year revenue 2008 obtained $21,796 billion with the yearly grow rate 31%
The fiscal year revenue 2009 obtained $23,651 billion with the yearly grow rate 9%
The fiscal year revenue 2010 obtained $29,321 billion with the yearly grow rate 24%
The stock price increased from year to year, it increased from $192.79 per share in 2004
to $619.98 per share in 2009 however the price of stock dropped 307.65 per share in 2008 due
Strengths Weakness
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• Most efficient search engine • Impact of click fraud practice on the
Opportunities Threats
Strengths
Google gains a strong market on search engine and other products and services that
made a good brand name in the world. The revenue for this company increases from
To build the supply chain in the world and stronger in the industry, Google has purchased the
new companies to increase and sell the service and products to its users through spending on
One of other things that makes the Google strong in the market, it has the active
founders and good human resource management. For example, Google hired a skilled
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employees like PhDs to enhance algorithms; and do research to create searching faster,
efficient and relevant. For reward system of Google, it provided to the top talent
employees with paid 10% and 10000 cash bonus. This makes the employees satisfies
In compete with others in the industry, Google has also competitive advantage on an
their business, education, and others. With simple interface and giving comprehensive
results, all these things make a satisfaction to its users and it is the achievement of
Google’s technology.
It gets reputation by its popularity which proceeds by its word of mouth publicity, so it
Google has the good innovation in making a good technology in indexing millions of
web pages on internet with using low operation cost of UNIX web servers.
Google produced variety range of products and service to serve its customers with free
and 97% of Google’s revenue come from advertising. For separating from advertising
and actual results Google gives “sponsored links” tag to sponsored results when users
search to get information. It always keeps the relevant sponsorship on the top when
doing search.
Google also has a range of innovative additional services like Images, Groups,
directory, and News. Google didn’t complicate its website by making itself a portal;
rather it kept tabs for these services on its homepage so users can easily navigate and
Google offers localized search called “search by location” where users can get results
It has a low operation cost regarding its products and services, but gained high revenue.
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It has also acquired YouTube which provides video services to users across the web
It has AdWords and AdSense programs working as the main mechanism to attract
advertisers and publishers to come to Google more and more because of mutual gain in
business.
Weakness
It is true that Google provides to users with good search engine, but many spammers
thousands of links to pages that they wanted Google to rank highly. It could make a
Google’s Cost Per Click advertising charging and ranking policy is confusing and
makes it difficult for marketers to predict where their ads would be positioned and how
much they would cost. It always has the impact of click fraud practice on the business
that make the advertisers lost their confidence on Google operation and let to loss of
profits.
in generating sales because visitors to web pages showing editorial content were less
likely than searchers to be ready to buy. Furthermore, contextual search algorithms are
not 100% perfect and many a times make mistakes. It was showed that the marketers
Google’s localized search algorithms too sometimes result in errors due to automated
indexing.
Although Google is a dominating player among search engine websites, only 50% to
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Google doesn’t have “sticky” like Yahoo! And MSN have which can attract users.
Google doesn’t have highly personalized search by which it could charge users with
cause much public concern over privacy issues and connect that with Google.
Federal Trade Commission and the consumer privacy groups Junkbusters have
The Justice Department request for records for millions of searches made on Google,
AOL and other popular search engines in an effort to bolster its case for an online
pornography law.
not have a good corporate with the company to achieve the target market.
Opportunities
The opportunity to grow the Google’s business expansion as global needs strong
strategies though management and other stakeholders. There are opportunities for
reaching new groups/segments and reaching for new contents for increasing revenue.
Its can enhance by having new acquisitions and continue wireless network expansions
move to the internet usage in some countries which will render the usage of google.com
to be increased as well.
Looking a good practice, it can relive the trend like Yahoo! and MSN and become a
mass market portal for users that will increase switching costs for its potential users.
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It is the good opportunity that it can add localized vendors paid advertisements on the
localized search and provide more services to the hand-held devices to capture more
For increasing the revenue, Google could increase its overall ads and as well as the
online video like YouTube is what the preference to users to spending time.
Readdress privacy issue that can be set industry standards on privacy and become a
The relationship with Microsoft via Google Microsoft search and browsers and search
sites targeted toward specific markets such as children with protections or senior
Threats
copyright lawsuits and issues for music, books, movies, and legal troubles of YouTube
are the threat to Google. In addition, patent infringement is another threat to lead higher
cost and prevent ability of this company to produce services or products that make
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Size of Google before more National or International regulation interferes with
There is no long time entry barrier in this business. Many competitors can emerge in
coming years with same services, better interface and names and can catch up Google’s
Google’s confusing Cost Per Click ranking and charging policy could disappoint its
Foreign exchange rates could become a major threat for Google. International revenues
account for 44% of total revenues fourth quarter so the exchange rates could have
caused $18 million to $81 million loss if they had not changed.
Public perception of data stored by Google is another threat how Google manage the
Google is the big competitor for Microsoft in USA and other counties so the marketing
power of Microsoft could make Bing strong in search engine and a serious competitor
censor the information and international data server location and the legal issues related
to the privacy and usage and ownership issues of the data by foreign governments.
Anti-Spyware programs such as XoftSpySE and NoAdware that can block cookies to
monitor users.
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3.4 Competitive Analysis - Porter’s five forces
The barriers to entry in the internet search market are high and compete. The current
competitors have thousands of servers deployed in locations all over the world and have
accumulated many year worth of data about user habits. A new entrant would need to provide
better search results at very fast speeds to compete in this highly competitive market. With that
in mind, it must be recognized that when Google was founded in 1998, Yahoo, Excite, and
Altavista dominated the search market and Google has since eclipsed them all. The market
now, however, is more mature with a necessary path dependency to gather data on both the
content of webpages and the search history of users. Therefore, the threat of new entrants in
Some of the primary suppliers are data houses where documents are sourced to be
returned in a search. Additionally, individuals and firms with online information like webpages
and blogs are suppliers of Google. Without these two Google cannot continue to attract users
Google’s ad system is a reliable source of income because both the ad-making partner
and ad-receiving individual are both customers of Google’s. So as long as Google maintains
its market dominance with the search product, supplier bargaining power will remain low.
Google’s cost of revenue as a percentage of sales in 2007 was 40%. This number is the same
for Yahoo suggests that both companies are equally efficient at maintaining supplier-seller
collaboration.
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Potential entry of Current Competitors
Google’s stated goal is to “organize the world’s information”, and to merit they have
created many complimentary products to their main internet search service. Targeted
advertisements based on the information they collect with their products are Google’s primary
source of revenue. In 2007, Google had revenues of $16.6 billion which grew an average of
Google’s main competitors, Yahoo, and Microsoft (operating under their respective
brands is MSN and Live Search), posted revenues of $7.0 billion and $51.1 billion respectively.
Presently, Google commands 57% of internet searches in the United States. This large
market share enables them to improve the quality of their search results and targeted ads more
quickly than their competitors. This creates a sort of self-perpetuating draw for customers as
the search results constantly improve. Yahoo and Microsoft lag behind with 23% and 11%
respective market shares. The competitive rivalry is strong and ongoing in this industry because
large amounts of advertising dollars flow to the website that has captured the largest volume
of searches.
Power of Buyers
Google has two basic customers; paying and nonpaying. The nonpaying customers are
users of Google's search services and other freeware applications. These individuals are the
core of operations because they allow Google to attract their paying customers. The paying
customers are usually firms who use targeted ads accompanying Google searches to reach
individuals. However, there are some individuals who do not want to be bombarded with ads,
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As of 2007, 99% of Google’s revenues are derived from advertising. However, no single
account contributes more than 3% to net revenue, and less than 5% of the revenue is generated
by any given network partner site. This means that no single buyer has a controlling interest.
In Google’s system many advertisers bid on keywords. Popular keywords like “Dallas Texas”
are sold for much higher value-per-click through than obscure topics. This distributed approach
allows Google to attract both large companies and small “mom-and-pop shops” keeping buyer
power low.
Potential Substitutes
In 2008, the internet has become the mode chosen by millions of people all over the world
to request and retrieve information. In light of this fact, there really is no suitable substitute for
search. Information can be organized in different ways including categories and sorted by date,
but Google provides tools to complete these tasks as well as conduct searches. A substitute
product may be invented in the future, but there are no obvious substitutes to organizing
Google has positioned itself well to weather each of Porter’s Five Forces of Competition
as well as stay afloat in a turbulent external environment. Google’s ability to please its
stakeholders will continue to define the success of the venture and the future of the company.
Google is in the business of making relevant information accessible and usable. The
competitive environment is interesting because the industry is vaguely defined. There are other
company that do differing levels of the same thing, but Google does it so well that its name has
become synonymous with the industry. For these purposes, and simplicity, it will concede that
According to the discussion about the problem and situational analysis, it can be
showed that Google has many strength compared to its competitors in the industry but it has
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also the weaknesses to considered and improved. The expansion operation on services or
products in some countries still the barriers and pressure to Google while the competition in
the market is full and take risks. Google is strong in cash flow with low cost of operation and
get high revenue but buying other companies still in front for competition/difficulty. The law
regulation, culture and language of each country is different that is the problem for Google at
international operation.
Strategic Solutions
Google is the top company in search engine in the world, the future feeling that the revenue
of this company may be slow because of its competitors in the market is increasing. Hence,
Google needs to consider the following solution for maintain its stronger performance in
4.1 Strategic Alternative – evaluate the pros and cons of each alternative
After done on analysis, there are some possible strategic alternative to be considered for
Google including three strategic alternatives are defending current market share, market
Google is known for everyone in the globe, but competition still exist to the
and social networking is so high yet. Google has strong corporate culture, innovation
technology, and good brand name. So, all these things let this company position in the global
market best against the competitors. The defending current market share is enable to Google
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maintain its technology, users and business growth, and before the industry situation drop in
any case.
The pro for this strategy is securing and maintaining the market share stability of
Google in the global market with its existing competitive advantage and
competency among competitors. The users is increasing every day so it is the good
The con for this strategy is Google can lost the market share in other forms of
advertising and being cut-out of the value chain by other companies. This means
that Google lost the profits for its business in other countries and maybe lost the
ability to compete with competitors while they develop their market share/brand
name.
Currently, Google stay on the top at global market how about the future? Market share
is the concern/barriers for selling the products and services. By considering on market
modification strategy, Google should consider on integration that lead this company to benefits
from market share in merges & acquisitions. This strategy is preferred and achievable because
it allows Google to quickly adopt new technologies and process rather than trying to develop
them internally. Therefore, it can also grow their operation international with the offering many
The pro for this strategy is helping the business operation in USA and international
to survive in the touch competition through merges with another company who
strong in different fields of internet technology and acquisition. Google entered into
for expanding business globally. So, the market for Google will gain additional
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The con for this strategy comes up with the huge investments on buying new
companies. Google fail in purchasing some companies for its market share like
As known before, Google has high innovative products and technology because of the
high skilled/ qualified workforce. Hence, the product modification strategy it could achieve the
attractive more users to use improve/new product feature and service plus existing ones.
The pro for this strategy is letting Google focus on the tangible technology that
improve for future competitive strategy what lost advertising revenue/market share.
It help to overcome the current product problems of Google on what the customer
feedback/complain or error for making the loyalty of old/new users. It also build
the image of Google in the Global market stronger and win over the target market
The con for this strategy would exist if Google did not strong innovate or not
modification the products properly. It will lost money and market share especially
V. Recommendation
As discuss and mentioned alternative strategies above, it can concluded that the best
solution for Google to implement is market modification strategy must be adopted. Google has
a good score in the global market in search engine and other products/service, so this company
could grow its impressions by increasing the frequency of searched by existing and new users,
the users that come from other search engines like Yahoo or About. It also attract the traffic to
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sites in its search and advertising networks. This strategy provides to Google as market leader
about advance in internet search, increase customer satisfaction, maintaining a positive public
perception. In addition, a contingency plan can be established that Google will be well prepared
for future successes existing in a different environment than they currently have.
Implementation Strategies
Have R&D of browsers, databases and servers continue along with evaluation of
Have a lobbyist in Washington, DC and California or any high technology state that
has many technology issues percolating into laws and regulations for the new breed
of digital technology issues. Become involved with all watchdog privacy issue
organizations.
taboos or sensitivities to help the company stay out of the hot seat with more legal
issues
Re-evaluate goals – how far does Google want to go on the privacy front especially
now that the merger with DoubleClick is raising serious questions about competition
and regulations?
Emphasize the usage of data containing information with permission and have open
Create and promote an image of an ethically and socially responsible company that
Implement enhanced operational and management systems that will provide the real
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Continued focus on enhanced advertising targeting
certain level of information they will be able to build a very detailed database about
Develop software for large data gathering systems or purchase companies that do
this.
Conclusion
Google will continue to develop its worldwide domination of all aspects of the internet,
search, multimedia and telecommunications industries. There are some points that need to be
considered including growing competition in global market, the threat is increasing, and world
technology change. In order to achieve the overall vision of Google, this company should be
advantage on its strength, minimize weaknesses, catch the opportunity as competitors, and
limit the threat. Finally, Google will be ready on all fronts with the products and services that
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