Case Study on Google Inc.

Overview

Company Brief

        Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on 1995, Google became the first popular search engine that later on dominated the global market. It also provides free services into its users like book search, videos (YouTube), maps, email and others. Operations focuses on a pure service where customers will get to have an experience of an open information system. Later on, it became an icon of top destinations of internet users and web surfers.

Company Highlights

• Initially having 4 employees with $100,000 invested amount to $25 million in one year.
• By 29th of April 2004, Google’s market shares had appreciated by 18 percent making its founders worth $3.8 billion each after the first day of trading
• Not just as a search engine, but Google introduced to market companion software (i.e. Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Book Search, Music Search and the Gmail.)
• In 2008, Google launched Android Operating System competing in the smartphone rivalry.

Issues

• Since Google Inc. is on a continual progress, what would be the thin line and when to know when to stop in an aggressive positioning
• From a Corporation to a Conglomerate as reported on October 2, 2015, being able to diversify further, what are the most effective products or services to develop
• Understanding the degree of continual strategy in sustaining competitive advantage

Company Mission

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The company’s purpose is to become by all means a map to guide all users in maneuvering in a vast, deep ocean of information.

Google Inc. products include:

• Google Earth
• Android
• Google Chrome
• AdSense
• AdWords

Internal/External Analysis 

PEST Analysis

Micro-Environment Analysis

        Industry Analysis involves the immediate industry and the competitive environment. Google as a part of the larger technological industry involving information access and dissemination, is clearly on the position of offensive direction. The nature of the industry involves continual development, marketing and advertising with the investors. Market size is global and consistently increasing especially in the developing countries as Google Inc. is around more than 100 countries. In addition, the degree of innovations and differentiation varies in product/service invention or creation. Driving forces include the globalization (stabilizing of countries), entry in the third world countries.

Porter’s 5-Forces

Bargaining Power of Supplier. Google has the advantage due to its regional operations. Others will not be affected once there is a failure in one. However in this case, the power of other company within the same industry could also be a threat due to Google’s compatibility with Apple and Microsoft products.

Barriers to entry. Search engine business, only hardware have switching costs while the service itself has absolutely no switch cost. Having the chances of Microsoft and Yahoo of disabling its compatibility with Google’s toolbars could be a significant barrier