This research paper explores various aspects of the widely-known company, Google Inc. It will offer insight into the company’s operations. Specifically, it will provide a description of the company consisting of a brief history, its products and services, and the corporation’s managers. This paper will also highlight the business financial performance as well as its goals though their company’s mission. We will be evaluating the company’s brand and their methods of promoting and advertising their products and services, and their ‘public image’ in terms of their economic and social positions. Lastly in this research paper we will provide our opinions on the company’s success and how it operates as well as identify if the company is on target with their goals and any problems they may be facing currently.
Jenna Section 1 – Google started off as a simple search engine founded by two friends, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in 1998 while studying at Stanford University in California. It went public on August 19, 2004 and after that everything changed for these two friends. Google currently has its headquarters in Mountain View California, but they have office in 47 different countries around the globe. Their CEO as of 2000 Eric Schmidt who replaced Larry Page they currently have over 53,600 employees both full time permanent staff and others. As google expanded as a brand its founders thought it could expand as far as what they offered people. Google is now much more than just a basic, everyday search engine, it includes Google maps, Gmail, Youtube, Chromecast, and much more.
Sergey Brin one of Google’s founders was born in Moscow Russia in 1973, in 1979 he and his family relocated to Maryland where he went to a Montessori school then a high school in the suburbs of Washington D.C. before going to the University of Maryland in 1990, nine months after the world wide web was released publicly. After he graduated he received a fellowship at Stanford University where he met Larry Page, the two realized each of their specialties; methods of ranking the importance of research papers based on how often they were used in other work for Page and developing data-mining systems for Brin , could be used together to organize data for public use and that is when the idea for Google came along. Brin is known to be more of the risk taker his newer projects include “Google Glass, airborne wind turbines and small contact lenses.” (Newell)
Larry Page the other founder of Google was born in East Lansing, Michigan in 1973, he grew up around computers and technology, his father taught computer science and his mother was a computer programming instructor at Michigan State University. He went on to the University of Michigan where he earned his degree in computer engineering before he went on to Stanford to get his masters in computer science and where he later met his future business partner Sergey Brin. Page took on more managerial roles in the company, he became the company’s CEO till his replacement in 2001, but he is still an active figure in the management of the company.
Eric Schmidt replaced Larry Page as Google’s CEO in 2000, he had experience with Bell Labs rewriting a major language analysis program and with Novell where he was the CEO. Schmidt got his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and then went on to University of California, Berkley and earned a master's for designing and implementing a campus, he also received his doctorate degree in electrical engineering and computer science.
Dana Section 1 – According to Google’s website its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful.Google is a very successful company and is considered “the world’s most valuable company” as reported by Lucy Hooker, business reporter for BBC News, “worth nearly $520 billion (USD)”. In 2004 google had its initial public offering (IPO) of stock to raise as much as $4 billion. Google initial public offering totalled 19,605,052 shares offered at $85 per share. Currently Google stocks are worth $835.55 (USD) per share as of February, 10th 2017, and a stock market value or market capital worth (USD) $570.55 billion. In accordance with the financial statements provided by Alphabet Inc., a multinational conglomerate founded by the two founders of Google, in 2016 alone, Google has made (USD)$90,272 billion in revenue, thus being the highest in the past three years. For 2015, 2014 and 2013 Google, has earned revenues of $74,989 billion, $66,001 billion and $55,519 billion, respectively. It is also very profitable company as it has made annual profits of $19,478 billion in 2016, $16,348 billion in 2015, $13620 billion in 2014 and $13160 billion in 2013 which are distributed as dividends to their shareholders.
Google is considered a part of the digital advertising market or the search engine market and is currently dominating the market. Google search engine has managed to maintain a high percentage of the market. According to NetMarketShare Google has a market share of 80.47% amongst other prominent search engines such as Microsoft, Bing, Yahoo and AOL globally. Google Search is Google’s core product and is still its most popular product since its launch in1997, however it is closely followed by Gmail which was launched in 2004.
Google is an equal opportunity company, meaning that they are interested a variety of employees. The Google careers webpage states that “At Google, we don’t just accept difference- we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products, and our community.”. This statement showcases how Google is proud and somewhat dependant on being an equal opportunity workplace. Google is an innovative company, they search for people who can bring new outlooks, perspectives and life experiences to their company. They value enthusiasm and curiosity in their employees in hopes that it may bring about innovation and new ideas. Google has a three-step process to becoming a Google employee (Googler). The first step is to match your skills and qualification to the job opportunity that interests you, then apply. The second step is an interview. The application is read by Google’s recruiters who are experts in interpreting resumes and are also familiar with all the jobs at Google. If the recruiter sees potential in your resume you will be contacted for an interview whether it be onsite or by phone/ Google hangout. The third and final step is decision making. An independent committee, made up Google employees at various levels, review your packet and makes a decision. Following which, if hired, they provide you with an offer.
Personally, Google seems to be a fulfilling place to work as they encourage creativity and ‘big’ thinking. Based on my research Google cares about their employees and offer a variety of benefits and perks. They believe that taking care of their employees is beneficial to the entire company. The company constantly evolves based on the needs and feedback of their employees. This strengthens my view that Google would be a great place to work. The care that they show for their employees as well as the equal opportunity that the company is based upon are the factors that would interest me to work for Google.
Kenn Section 2 – Google has many branches that covers many areas in the tech world today, they first launched the Google search engine which put the company on the map. When someone has a question they asked themselves or something they want to learn they instantly think to “Google it”, at that point google has no real competitor in the search engine district. Google is such a huge company they have many competitors as they battle against Apple, Bing, Amazon, and many others. On its website it promotes themselves very well as they focus on telling their customers they intend on making a better world first rather than just trying to make profit for themselves. Google have a wide range of products that you are able to obtain on Google store, they vary from selling the new Google phone to also selling “Google home” which assist you in any way you might demand it to. Every end of the year google has a major commercial to wrap up major events throughout these twelve months. These commercials are very impactful and meaningful has they capture not only the most searched requests on google but also every major event, regardless if it was bad news or good news. Google also had a great superbowl commercial on their new product named “Google Home”,it was very interesting as each character in the commercial returned home from their day and ask a request upon their “Google home” and it shot back a perfect answer, there isn’t much that could be done to make this commercial any better. Google’s facebook page in very informative as first they have near 22,000,000 people liking their page, their motto and quote on their page is also meaningful, “Organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.” this quote help google reach out to all people and races, they seem to be trying to unite the world as much as they can using the internet.
Brandon Section 2 – On July 2010, Google released its redesign of the Google News page. Google added several new and innovative features in hopes of making pleasing it's already unhappy News Page users. However, the new feature that allowed users to opt to view news stories in two columns, instead of one did not resonate well with Google News users. User’s posted their opinions online saying “ Hate it, hate it, hate it!” and “what is happening to you (Google)? Why are you doing this to us?” It is very important for a company, especially one as huge as Google, to know about consumer complaints. Google does address this issue regarding the News Page. Google product manager, Chris Beckmann comments, “Some people are please with the redesign… especially how the ‘News for you’ section lets you see a stream of articles tailored to the interests you specify”.
Google’s Wifi Wireless Router has been receiving multiple complaints from users recently. TechnoBuffalo, a company that specializes in testing and reviewing new technology, had many issues with the Google Wifi. The company complains that gigabit speeds on the device were very slow, when customers are paying a premium price for the item. Along with slow speeds, bad signal reception was also reported. Jon, a TechnoBuffalo employee, called Google support but was not able to get the issues handled. These issues continued and Jon eventually found a new router solution for his home. This is a perfect example that illustrates how important it is for companies to know about its customers complaints. Along with knowing customers complaint’s, a company should also know how to resolve these complaints. In this case, Google did not know how to resolve its customer’s issue, which resulted in the loss of business.
Google plays a huge role in giving back to the community. In 2015, Google introduced its “Impact Challenge: Disabilities” which took action towards creating a “world that works for everyone”. Google worked with some of the top nonprofit organizations to build awareness, host events to spark innovation, and asked the community to help find solutions that would bring those with disabilities more life opportunities. Google also built an experience that celebrated the ways technology creates a more inclusive world for everyone for the 2016 Special Olympics and created an exhibit honoring the leaders of the Disability Rights Movement for the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Each June, Google encourages its employees to leave their office spaces in exchange for a day to participate in service projects in the community. Google also allows its workers to use up to 20 hours of work time to volunteer. Google reports that in 2016 more than 5,000 Google employees completed over 400 projects over the world, with about 50,000 volunteer hours
In 2016, at Google’s third annual Global Giving week, the company produced over $24 million in donations from Google employees, and others. From the dates of December 5th through December 9th, donations from Google employees were matched by Google. More that $800,000 was raised for Second Harvest Food Bank, nearly $500,000 for Give Directly, and around $300,000 for the International Rescue Committee (GoogleInc). Around 2,000 Google employees pledged their support for several nonprofit organizations and a third of the employees pledged donations to 750 nonprofits around the world. Since 2005, Google reports that is has donated more than $9 million to disaster relief and recovery efforts around the world; ranging from Hurricane Sandy, to the Nepal earthquake, Google has also provided grants and that support first responders and their families. Google has recently completed its goal of raising 10 million Euros globally for refugees and migrants. Google is partnered with Doctors Without Borders, The International Rescue Committee, Save The Children, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
In my view, I believe that Google is doing an outstanding job in its endeavors to promote social responsibility and giving back to the community. Not only does Google donate to organizations such as the Special Olympics, but also helps those affected by natural disasters. It is evident that Google strongly believes in pushing the agenda of giving back to the community as it strongly pushes its employees to take take free time off from work to volunteer. When it comes to Disaster relief, Google sets the standard for aiding those affected. Donating over $9 million in the last few years, Google has funded relief and recovery efforts for the Nepal Earthquake, Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, Northern India flooding, Japan earthquake / tsunami, and the Oklahoma tornado.
Section 3 Thomas 1. Google is comprised of some of the brightest minds on the earth and the management already knows how to use that to their benefit to help the company grow so there is nothing I can personally think of to help the company grow.
2. They are about one thing above all else: making information and knowledge available for everyone. People want more local, more context-specific information, and they want it at their fingertips, they succeed this with their searches through Google Now. The world will take up to 1 trillion photos this year and they have made it easier to organize, protect, and located these photos on any device with Google photos. They have helped people travel with google maps showing them not only how to get from start to finish but how to avoid hazards and traffic but it also shows shopping ours and suggest things to do in the area. This is just for the search department. They have a long term investment into the field of artificial intelligence. This is not to just help users with their daily tasks such as google searches with their voice, translation, or finding photos based on actions in them but to eventually tackle bigger things like cancer and climate change. This is making great breakthroughs cause DeepMind', AlphaGo is the A.I to beat a professional in the most complex game ever devised by humans. Google has invested into the mobile web making smoother and faster. Prime example of this in the Accelerate Mobile Pages project that helps news publishers create optimized content for mobile instantly. The Progressive Web Apps has helped sites load quickly and send notifications as long as home screen icons. Google works on advertising because it’s what lets them make their services free to use. They want to level the playing field for everyone so someone in a rural schoolhouse gets the same search as someone in a high rise. Google is succeeding and will continue to succeed because it’s staying true to its mission from when it first began by making Google and technology work for you and everyone.
Zongyang Li Section 3 3. The risks which are Google will be facing is “Social, Vertical search, Payments and commerce, Slowing growth, and Antitrust.”
For the social problem, they will face those young and nimbler company such as “Facebook”, “Twitter” and the main problem is Google doesn’t have anything to really take on LinkedIn in professional networking or Twitter in microblogging.
The vertical search is one of the biggest problem too. Google is a really big company and people love to use it to search some information and Google spend hundreds of millions—sometimes billions—of dollars on sponsored links that run alongside search results to make sure they're getting Web traffic. But the particular apps can kill google like when young people have vacation they want to know where is the best place to stay for nights they can use “HotelTonight，Airbnb，Priceline” to know where is the best place. And google said “search queries are increasingly being undertaken via 'apps' tailored to particular devices or social media platforms, which could affect our share of the search market over time." So they know where is their problem for the Vertical search.
Payments problem is competitiveness part. We all know the easy payment way such as “PayPal, Apple pay ” And the Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba will come to American the competition will increase again.
Growth lower it is just a warning just because Google's revenue growth, excluding the Motorola business, slowed to 21 percent in 2013 from 29 percent so I am not sure if google still growth like this how he can keep earn money like few years ago.
Antitrust, in my mind this is the biggest problem for google. Every search engine cannot lose trust to the user and if Google cannot solve this problem it will user really quick.
Pavle Section 3 4. Google is one of most important and most influential companies in the world. As previously mentioned, Google is continuously growing financially over the years, profits constantly going up, as well as the price of the stock. Yet, when you reach high levels, your growth starts to decrease as there is not much room for improvement and expansion. Google is already essential component of life for the people out of most countries in the world, yet, Google is prohibited in some countries, including the biggest, China. Expanding to market in China would bring a lot more consumers and, possibly, a lot more profit for the company. Google perhaps can’t do a lot about it, but improvement of relations between US and China can bring many new consumers to Google’s network.
Google is socially responsible company, which is important for both customers and employees. In some cases, we see companies failing to do what society demands, which leads to customers losing trust (Volkswagen circumventing emission control, Uber during Muslim Ban). Google is spending millions to improve society, donating large amounts to people and organizations in need and volunteering to make world better place to live in. People know that and trust Google, which is essential in the long run, as they continue using Google, instead of dropping it for competitors. Employees want to work for the company that cares about the society as well.
Google is always improving, gathering large amounts of data to figure out how to be more efficient and productive, how to increase profits, but also, how to maximize potential of employees. In 2012, they started with Project Aristotle, or mission “How to build the best team”. For years, they researched and gathered data trying to find the pattern, with essential goal to maximize potential and specialization of their employees. It showed that mainstream ideas such as “putting introverts with introverts” or “putting most intelligent and best people together” had no particular influence on efficiency and productivity of teams. They figured out that key is how the team is set up and managed, not who is on the team. It is far more important that employees feel safe and secure in teams and for them to know they can speak up and suggest their own ideas. It gave Google and many team managers platform to build on and create better atmosphere in the team, which further led to increase of efficiency and productivity of those teams, as well as influx of many new ideas. And again, Google decides to share the results of project that costed millions to public, giving platform for every company and team across the world to build on.
Google is one of the biggest companies in the world and they are going to remain one. They care about employees and customers and they are constantly searching for an edge over the competition. Whether it’s by implementing new technologies or by improving efficiency of their teams. Google is one of the biggest. Google is heavily investing to remain one of the biggest and even to grow further.