Google Case Study

Despite the history of Google is not very long, it is already the dominant company in the market of

internet search engines and other online services. However, competition in this industry is keen. As we

know, Google has numerous competitors including Yahoo! and Microsoft. Therefore, this report is

writing for two objectives. The first one is to analyze forces most likely to bring about major change to

the search industry within the next three to five years. The second one is to identify key factors that define

success in the search industry.

According to research about search industry, threat of substitute products and new entrants should be the

forces seem most likely to bring about major change to this industry in the next few years. And the

changes of both forces will probably be derived by the advancement of new search technology.

For the threat of substitute products, competitors like Yahoo! and Microsoft may probably develop some

kinds of search technologies which can produce higher relevancy of search results with higher speed than

Google's current technologies BackRub and semantic search engine like what found by Powerset. As for

the market of desktop software appliance, in order to confront our product Google Apps, competitors like

Microsoft may soon develop and introduce similar products or simply add similar web-based functions to

Microsoft Office. As a giant leading company, Microsoft (and its subsidiary company Yahoo!) definitely

has such a ability to develop those substitute products to compete with products of Google. Or they can

also buy other young and smaller company to get those technologies.

In such an unpredictable industry with low barrier to entry, competitive entrants may appear every

moment in every country around the world instead of only United States. Google itself is a good example.

It could take over the dominant position in the search industry from Yahoo! in less than ten years. Besides,

it could further enter other industry like mobile and desktop software appliances to cooperate with Nokia,

LG, and compete with Microsoft and Apple. These all prove that the search industry as well as the high

technology industry is never stable. It is extremely easy for competitors to entry and Google's primary

competitors may change anytime.

For the key factors that define success in the search industry, the most important one should be keeping

the information of the market updated. It includes the new technologies such as advanced search

technology, cloud computing and implication on mobile, etc. Besides, as new competitors may appear

anytime anywhere, search companies should beware of every entrant with potential threats.

The second key factor is closely related to the first one. Companies in this industry should keep looking

for new companies with potential useful technologies and further plan for acquisition of some profitable

ones. This action has two main purposes. The first one is to prevent those companies to be further

developed into potential threats in order to protect the stability of their own core businesses. The second

one is to keep their technology be up-to-date and competitive. It can also be treated as a win-win situation

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