Stanford University is the place where the google funders met back in 1995. Larry Page and Sergey Brin built a search engine called BackRub before it turned into Google in 1998 (Google, n.d.). In year 2000, Google introduced a self-service Program called AdWords, this program helped thousands of businesses to be successful (Google, n.d.). One of the favourable Ad network to clients that was developed by Google called AdSense, which enables clients to make revenue by running AdSense on their old and new websites (Google AdSense quick guide. n.d.). Google has brought other solution to the business such as Google Analytics, Google Apps and Google checkout. It also uses YouTube as a source for advertisement.
According to the Analyst Ellison, S. (2016). 90.4% of Google’s total revenue came from advertising in 2015 which is about US$67.4 billion. In fact, Google is number one of the world’s digital advertising revenue with more than 30%, about 4 times as much as the second earner in the list, Facebook with 9.6%. (eMarketer, 2016)
Figure 1 The corporate structure of Google (Titcomb, J. (n.d.))
Key words
Google, Alphabet, Monetisation, Publisher, SWOT, PESTLE, Consultancy, Management, Leadership.
Section 1: The organisation and environment
1a: The client’s needs and external environment
Being in position as one of the most valuable brands in the world with a vision statement “to provide access to the world’s information in one click.” And mission statement states “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” (Thompson, A. 2017). A good understanding is required to study this huge company. Both PESTLE Analysis and SWOT Analysis will be conducted as tools to analyse external and internal environment of Google.
The Client’s Needs
According to Steve Rogers video, the Director of User Experience at Google, the client’s needs form under the question “what is happening in the publishing world in developing markets?”. It is stated that the developing world has jumped the whole desktop to mobile devices and tablets, which in many cases the users have immediate access to videos and images. Google has a challenging goal to encourage more people in developing countries to monetise.
PESTLE Analysis – External Environment
PESTLE analysis is used to analyse and assess external environment variables influencing the execution of an organisation with the point of get-together information to direct vital leadership.
Google’s administration team profoundly redesigned the company in July 2015 by making the Alphabet the holding company. PESTLE Analysis is carried out to see how it affects the Alphabet company.
POLITICAL FACTORS
There has additionally been some criticism that Google has excessively control over the stream of data. Social researchers Robert Epstein and Ronald E. Robertson have even made the claim that Google’s search results could impact the result of elections (Daniel, 2015).
Google is one of numerous United States organisations that keep cash in bank accounts outside the U.S. to avoid the high tax rate that is imposed by the USA government. According to Gitau, B. (2015), Congress tried to lure some of the money back to the US. On the off chance that this happens, it could cut Google’s money flow.
Moreover, Google has not possessed the capacity to enter some conceivably lucrative markets, such as China, as a result of political reasons
ECONOMIC FACTORS
Alphabet has gathered a large amount of money. If the value of currency has dropped, the company’s value could be reduced.
Regarding the previous factor when it says the Congress tried to lure some of the money back to the US, Google could lose a lot of money if it is forced to do so. It could also lose cash if the currency changed from is stronger than dollar.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
- Zakrzewski, C. (2015) has reported that searches from mobile devices is more than the traditional PCs and laptops.
- Social media websites, for instance, Facebook and Twitter have been grown rapidly, as a result, searches and streaming videos and other features are also increased.
- According to Search Engine Watch, Amazon passes Google as top destination for shopping research. As a result, this makes it difficult for Google to take advantage of such transactions.
- A decrease in traditional media, for example, TV is compelling content suppliers, for instance, TV networks and video studios to build up their own substance conveyance platforms that compete specifically with YouTube.
TECHNOLOGY ANALYSIS
– The growing in social media network such as, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and others have the ability to send news, audio and live videos. Moreover, some other can do financial transactions which can lead users to move from Google to other services.
– Mobile devices usage to access the internet has grown. Some of these devices have supported search engines that compete with Google.
– Some competitors have the ability to enhance their search algorithms to compete with Google.
– Mobile phone Applications became widely used and developed. Alternative solution to Google could be introduced.
– Many companies are currently planning restrictive applications to enable clients to bypass web search tools. Cases of this include shopping applications.
Legal
– Google is progressively entering other fields, for example, telecommunications and self-driving-cars. This could put serious confinements on its operations
– Since Google has entered new different fields such as insurance and finance, legal costs could be increased as a result of that.
– According to Toor, A. (2017), The EU’s antitrust watchdog fined Google €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) for manipulating search results to favour its own shopping services over those offered by competitors.
ENVIRONMENT FACTORS
Google’s business plan is intensely relying on Internet infrastructure that requires a huge amount of power, Internet infrastructure includes Data Centres. The need for renewable energy as a source of electricity to power the internet infrastructure may cost more than the typical sources, this results of cutting off the free services that Google provide right now.
1b: The organisation and its internal environment
According to Georgiadis, M. (2014), the Google’s six values for business leaderships are:
1- Put the user first.
2- Speed is a virtue.
3- Set audacious goals.
4- Overweight the future.
5- Embrace failure to break boundaries.
6- Be uncompromising about people.
SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT analysis is a tool for investigating the market position of a company. It was created in the 1960s because of research did at Stanford Research Institute into the disappointment of corporate arranging methods. (CMI, n.d.)
SWOT stands for: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The analysis includes making inquiries intended to evaluate the company’s capabilities, investigate opportunities open to it and distinguish real and potential threats to its prosperity, and gathering the data expected to answer them. Cases of the things to ask are appeared in the table below. (CMI, n.d.)
Despite the fact that SWOT Analysis can be especially valuable for SMEs and new businesses in setting up their business strategies. SWOT is also useful for organisations and incorporation.
Figure 2 SWOT Analysis, Management models CMI (n.d.)
STRENGTH
1. It has set up a brand name for itself and is considered to be the web search engine number one in the world.
2. Its word of mouth exposure makes its reputation. No need to spend a lot on advertising the search engine when it comes to word of mouth.
3. Enhancing the search engine algorithms for faster processes and relevant results is the main role for PhDs who were hired for this purpose.
4. The speed of its search engine is very dependable and easy to understand.
5. It utilises state-of-the-art technology to inventory the pages to give the most refreshed results to the users.
6. Users can access the important pages, thanks to its Page-Rank technology to rank web pages.
7. Numerous products and services under its brand name were introduced, for instance, Desktop Software, Web Applications, Mobile devices, Hardware products.
8. Two different results the user can find, the sponsored links are separated from the normal links.
9. About 88 languages are supported in its search engine interface for local users in different countries it also gives results based on user location.
10. It provides a new service called Tashkeel for those who want to learn Arabic. It can be found on (http://tashkeel.googlelabs.com).
11. It introduced different services such as, Google Groups, Google Mail, Google translate, Google News and so forth.
12. It does not force the user to use the advertised links to increase its ad revenue.
13. It has additionally obtained YouTube which gives video services. YouTube considered to the number one for online videos.
14. It has AdWords and AdSense programs considered to be the main mechanism for advertising.
WEAKNESS
1. It relies mainly on its search based Ad.
2. Spammers can use Google’s ranking technology as an advantage for them by making websites that have plenty of links to be higher ranks.
3. Its cost-per-click Ad charge and positioning strategy makes it difficult for the customers to foresee the rank of their advertisements.
4. Sometimes there are errors in the result based on the location.
5. The lack of the ability in monetising YouTube.
6. The weakness of its social media network Google Plus as mentioned in Rogers video.
7. The cost for the servers and Data Centre getting even higher.
OPPORTUNITIES
1. Google has good opportunities to reach new groups and new contents.
2. it has opportunity in using higher value content on the internet.
3. It can expand its general promotions. spending on the internet.
4. With its good reputation, it can make its enhanced social media network widely used.
5. It can expand the web utilisation which will render the use of google.com to be expanded too.
6. It can provide additional services to wireless devices to increase the market.
THREATS
1. The control will be forced which will make many services to be less viable.
2. Competitors like Yahoo and Bing as Steve Rogers mentioned in his video.
3. Users winding up not getting to the institutional membership.
4. Legal lawsuit and political landscape as Steve Rogers mentioned in his video.
5. Competitors can develop a better interface and new ideas in the search engine mechanism as Steve Rogers mentioned in his video.
6. Clients may be got disappointed by cost-per-click policies.
7. It can lose its basic and easy to use interface on the off chance that it chooses to become a portal.
8. Requiring personal information may result indisposed users.
9. Its services depend exceptionally on its network users.
10. Social landscape as mentioned in Rogers video.
Leadership principle of Google
Google employed smart engineers, advanced the most brilliant to be leaders, then it enables leaders to concentrate their improvements in the area that has better impact on investment. Murray, S. (2011) has listed the most important qualities of leadership at Google as following:
1- Be a good coach.
2- Empower your team and don’t micromanage.
3- Express interest in your team members success and well-being.
4- Be productive and results-oriented.
5- Be a good communicator and listen to your team.
6- Help your employees with career development.
7- Have a clear vision and strategy for the team.
8- Have technical skills so you can advise the team.
Culture
It is stated that Google cares about its employees, it has people their only rule is to make employees happy and productive. This culture is one of the things that makes Google successful.
Method of Communications
It has said by Rogers in his video that Google has stand-ups for employees every day or every week, project reports and everyone in the company receives snippets. It also has two types of meetings, for groups under 100 members, formal level monthly all hands meetings are taking place. And for large numbers it has corporate all hands meetings.
Organisations strategic leadership style
Google’s leadership has been distributed among its brilliant engineers who became leaders, therefore the leadership style is “Distributed leadership”. (Ugcfrp, n.d.)
Section 2: Analysis and recommendation to the organisation
2a: Analysis of Findings
It has been stated by Steve Rogers in his video that the 3 most affective things on business of Google are, Political landscape, competitive landscape and social landscape. The company itself is not affected by BREXIT, both UK and Europe remains good places for Google to do business. However, PESTLE Analysis shows that the political factor can affect the organisation since it is internationally known, the change in politician in the United States may result in decrease the total revenue of the company, if the government enacted some rules to bring the offshore money into the US, which will be affected by the government tax on companies. It will also be affected by the currency exchange when it is forced to bring the money back to the US.
The competitors of Google vary from social media competitors and search engines competitors to financial transactional competitors. Google has introduced services for each of sector, Google plus and YouTube in social media, AdSense and AdWords in business sector and mainly the Google search engine. Bing and Yahoo are the main competitors for Google search engine.
Social factor represented in the previous section addressed some issues that Google faces, the increasing usage of mobile devices that supports applications with independent search engines result in decreasing the chance of using Google as a search engine. The use of social media network such as, Facebook and Twitter, have increased, since both networks used for socialising, news, uploading videos and support audio and video conversations.
Amazon have been recognised as the top destination for shopping research on the web, this decreases the chance for Google to compete its competitor in the financial transactions.
2b: RECOMMENDATIONS.
Even though Google structure has been changed and now it is owned by Alphabet, mission and vision are still the same even though the company has introduced different products in which it differs to its mission and vision statements, products such as, Gmail and Android are still under Google.
SWOT Analysis has pointed some weaknesses that can be maintained to help , change the strategy of cost-per-click charge and positioning to make it simpler for clients to understand. Enhance Google plus for better interface and more features that supports, since social media is one of the weaknesses of Google.
Many recommendations from my personal experience that help publishers on Youtube to monetise their contents: these recommendations for long-term and short-term planning:
– Since Youtube is mainly for broadcasting videos, cameras are the main element in this case. Providing professional cameras for publishers in a way that helps them to record good quality videos. Contracts are good solutions to help publishers purchase cameras from Google. The same idea goes with Voice Records, it is good idea to provide them as contracts for publishers.
– Open labs for experiments in specific areas with high quality equipment.
– People are looking for trusty videos, publishing official videos on how to make money from publishing on YouTube.
– Encourage the existed publishers by setting up competitions and draw prizes for winners.
– People trust the company itself. By opening events and conferences, people are likely to be engaged.
– For those who speak different languages, adopting the top followed channels in different languages and encourage them to create videos to share their experience in monetising on YouTube. Having a little push from Google by approving the videos increases the chance of getting more publishers. A special stamp is one of the ways to approve videos by YouTube.
Section 3: Implementation: 1000
One of the recommendations states that Google could adopt the top subscribed channels on YouTube to create videos in their own languages to encourage more people to monetise online. To implement this, it is recommended to set up realistic expectations on
Throughout the course, I gained several skills, being a member in a team in every workshop introduced me to different people with different background and culture. According to CMI Checklist 271, “Set realistic expectations about how you want to work and communicate with your own team, and how you plan to overcome any cultural or language barriers” is one of the important points in Communication Across Cultures to adopt flexible management style. I also can use the appropriate communication methods based on the situation, preferably face to face or video calls.
I can see the difference between the leadership and the management, since Steve Rogers defined the former “is about understanding where you are going as a business and making it tangible for people in the organisation in a way that makes them to follow you.” And the latter “is about ensuring you have the tools the processes, the people, the logistics.”.
Being a consultant to the client gave me the chance to practice what I gained from the course. Starting by defining the client’s needs, SWOT and PESTLE are techniques in which can be used to assess client needs. Listen to the client is one of the habits that good consultants should have. Listen, listen and listen to make sure you are following the client needs.
This case study enabled me to apply my good understanding of SWOT and PESTLE tools to analyse the internal and external environment of a company. The weakness and threats are the main factors to look at when advising the client to maintain the business. Strength and opportunity should give a good understanding of the company’s business in order to improve its weakness and threats.
A lot of vacancies in IT consultants are available in the websites that job seekers use, this gives me a good chance when successfully completing this course to find a suitable job.