Google Case

Google’s Marketing Excellence

In 1998, two Stanford University PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founded a search
engine company and named it Google. The name plays on the number googol—1 followed by
100 zeroes—and refers to the massive quantity of data available online that the company helps
users find. Google’s corporate mission is “To organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.” As such, the company focuses first and foremost on creating
the perfect search engine. Google search works because it uses the millions of links on other
Web sites to help determine which sites offer the most valuable content. The company has
become the worldwide market leader for search engines through its strategic business focus and
constant product innovation.

Google creates and distributes its products for free, which in turn has attracted a host of online
advertisers seeking targeted advertising space. About 96 percent of its revenues come from
online advertising, which means that creating new advertising space is critical to the company’s
growth. Google sells advertising space on its search pages through a program called AdWords,
which is linked to specific keywords. Hundreds of thousands of companies use AdWords by
buying “search ads,” little text-based boxes shown alongside relevant search results that
advertisers pay for only when users click on them.

Google also runs an advertising program called AdSense, which allows any Web site to display
targeted Google ads relevant to the content of its site. Web site publishers earn money every time
their visitors click on these ads. In addition to offering prime online real estate for advertisers,
Google adds value by providing tools so businesses can better target their ads and understand the
effectiveness of their marketing. Google Analytics, for example, is free to Google’s advertisers
and provides a custom report detailing how Internet users found the site, what ads they saw
and/or clicked on, how they behaved on the site, and how much traffic was generated.
With its ability to deploy data that enable up-tothe-minute improvements in a Web marketing
program, Google supports a style of marketing in which the advertising resources and budget can
be constantly monitored and optimized. Google calls this approach “marketing asset
management,” implying that advertising should be managed like assets in a portfolio depending
on the market conditions. Rather than following a marketing plan developed months in advance,
companies use the realtime data collected on their campaigns to optimize the campaign’s
effectiveness and be more responsive to the market.
Since its launch, Google has expanded far beyond its search capabilities with numerous other
products, applications, and tools that benefit both consumers and businesses. The goal behind
each product was to help users find information they need and to help them get things done
better, faster, and easier than before. Today, Google’s wide range of products and services fall
into the following categories: Web (Web Search, iGoogle, Google Chrome), Mobile (Mobile,
Search for Mobile, Maps for Mobile), Media (Picasa, Google Play, Youtube.com, which Google
acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion), Geo (Earth, Maps), Home & Office (Docs, Gmail, Calendar),
Social (Google+, Blogger), Specialized Search (Patents, Finance, Scholarly Papers), and
Innovation.
As the world becomes more mobile, Google is betting big in the mobile category. In 2008,
Google launched Android, a mobile operating system that went head to head with Apple’s
iPhone. The biggest differentiation between the two was that Android was free, open sourced,
and backed by a multimillion-dollar investment. That meant Google wanted its partners to help
build and design Android over the years. The investment paid off, and by 2010, Android became
the number-one mobile operating system in the market. As Google expanded into mobile
technology, it quickly became the leader in mobile advertising with 75 percent market share for
search ads and approximately 50 percent market share for all mobile ads. In 2012, Google
entered the mobile device category when it purchased Motorola and launched the Nexus 7, a
sleek tablet that competed directly with the iPad and Kindle. As Google looks toward the future,
the company wants to offer the ultimate mobile solution—Google mobile devices along with
mobile services so users can use all Google all the time.
Google’s ultimate goal is to reach as many people as possible on the Web—whether by PC or by

mobile devices. The more users on the Web, the more advertising Google can sell. Google’s new
products not only accomplish this goal but also make the Web a more personalized experience.
Google has enjoyed great success as a company and a brand in its short lifetime. From the
beginning, it has strived to be one of the “good guys” in the corporate world, supporting a
touchy-feely work environment, strong ethics, and a famous founding credo: “Don’t be evil.”
Google currently holds a 67 percent market share for core searches in the United States,
significantly greater than Microsoft’s 17 percent and Yahoo!’s 15 percent market shares.
Globally, Google holds a more dominant lead, with 85 percent market share over Yahoo!’s 8
percent and Microsoft’s 3 percent. Google’s revenues topped $59 billion in 2013, and the
company was ranked the second most powerful brand in the world with a brand value of $107
billion. In addition, Google’s $400 billion market capitalization in 2014 edged out companies
like Walmart and Microsoft to become the second most valuable company in the world.
Questions
1. With a portfolio as diverse as Google’s, what are the company’s core brand values?
2. What’s next for Google? Is the company right to put so much focus on Mobile?
3. What marketing lesion you learn from Google?

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Google’s Marketing Excellence

Google’s ultimate goal is to reach as many people as possible on the Web—whether by PC or by

3. What marketing lesion you learn from Google?

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