A Case Study
PRESENTED BY: TED, TIFFANY & JORDAN
Intro/Summary - Who is the
Protagonist?
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Google is the world’s leading search engine
Google was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in June of 1999 who received their
first round funding from two elite venture capital firms: Sequioa and Kleiner Perkins
In March of 2001, Google added Eric Shmidt as CEO with Brin and Page taking the titles of
president-technology and president-products, respectively
Google wanted to focus on its primary function which is conducting searches instead of
becoming a portal like its biggest competitor Yahoo!
Although Google did not want to become a portal, the company did continue to add
applications useful to users including: Gmail, Google Desktop, Google Maps, Google
Earth, and Google Talk
The Protagonists in this case are Google’s entire management team:
Eric Shmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page
 Focused on giving back to users
 Overcame many trials and tribulations
 Maintained their integrity and corporate values thus far in the
company’s history
Intro/Summary - Key Issues
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Making money while still focusing on the users.
Giving users the best experience possible.
Getting others to purchase dual class stock which was leveraged to
maintain Google management’s ownership of the corporation
Maintaining Google’s integrity and Corporate Values which are:
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Don’t be evil, technology matters
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We make our own rules.
Bringing about innovation within the organization.
Convincing others that Google is not an evil force trying to take over
the world.
Discovering ways to enable Google to continue to outdo competitors.
Intro/Summary - Key Decisions
Google utilized paid listings to make money but avoid banner ads which distract users and diminish their
search results
Google used methods such as the following to give users the best experience
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Providing only results directly related to the user’s search
Using a tool to “read the users mind” in case a typo was made while entering the search item
Allowing users to select the language which they are the most comfortable with
Google explained to investors that purchasing the Class A share of their dual class stock was an unusual
long-term bet on the Google team and their innovative approach and that they wanted to bridge the media
and technology industries.
One of the primary ways Google maintained their integrity was by never manipulating search rankings to
put their advertising or content partners higher in the search results.
Google brought about innovation by encouraging engineers to spend 20% of their time working on projects
of their choosing which brought about Google News and Orkut, a social networking site.
To address concerns that Google was evil, Sergey Brin stated, “Some say Google is God. Others say Google
is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines, unlike other
companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. People come to Google because they
choose to. We don’t trick them.”
To continue to outdo competitors, Google’s main focus was on developing superior search solutions and
monetizing those solutions through targeted advertising.
ID of Key Issues-Problems/Risks
• Image of being “God” or “Satan” of the WWW.
• Seen internationally as “a tool of US cultural imperialism”
• Potential loss of Google advertisers due to customer
service issues.
• Competition and specific products:
• Yahoo!:
• Portal to diverse third party content and related transactional
services.
• HotJobs was 3rd largest online recruitment site
• Managed the 2nd largest dating site
• Microsoft:
• Portal similar to Yahoo!
• Windows Live
• eBay:
• E-commerce
ID of Key Issues-Opportunities
1) Development of a portal similar to Yahoo!
2) Extending into e-commerce
3) Development of more user-friendly
products to compete with MS Office and
Windows
4) Development and recruitment of young,
new IT talent
5) Become more involved in social networking
6) Research multi-gaming platforms
ID of Key Issues-Alternatives
1. Partner with e-Bay or Amazon for ecommerce expansion
2. Market “Open Office” to new users
3. Focus on one service in their proposed
“portal initiative” to highlight and market
4. Develop a multi-player gaming platform
5. Buy Twitter to get in the social networking
space
ID of Key Issues-Evidence
1.Partner with e-Bay or Amazon for e-commerce expansion
-Develop new ways to make online transactions easier, faster and more secure.
Marketing a more secure transaction process would definitely win me over.
1.Market “Open Office” to new users
-Current MS Office users are usually loyal. So we should focus on new users and
avenues to new users (education, corporations, public facilities, etc.)
3. Focus on one service in their proposed “portal initiative” to highlight and market
-Yahoo! Is doing well with it’s portal channels. Google could work with Netflix or
Columbia House and possibly i-tunes or Wal-Mart to promote music and movie
channels.
4. Develop a multi-player gaming platform
5. Buy Twitter to get in the social networking space
– Criteria used to judge between the alternatives.
– Does the alternative meet our mission of organizing the world’s information?
– Does the alternative continue to promote our search solutions using advertising for revenue?
– Does the alternative develop new Google users?
– Does the alternative enhance the Google image?
The Protagonist’s Action Plan
• If I was in sole control of the direction of Google
I would certainly continue doing what has
brought them success.
• Just because someone may have the power to
control the helm doesn’t mean that the
company isn’t already doing the right
successful things.
• Find more ways to serve people IT-based
services for FREE!
The Protagonist’s Action Plan
• Who doesn’t like free?
• As a Google services user, I am continuously
amazed at how professional their free products are.
• For example: Their search engine is better than
any other. Picasa is better than Kodak’s software.
Maps is better than MS-Maps. Latitude is better
than Verizon’s tracker.
• Yet, all this is free to the user for very little
inconvenience of advertising. Google Chrome isn’t
yet the best browser, but its open-source is
continually refined and will soon become the best.
This is built on user trust.
The Protagonist’s Action Plan
Full Disclosure: This is what has secured the
impression that Google will “do no evil”.
• When you are open and upfront with your users you
build trust. Without trust, you will not succeed. The
case said that word-of-mouth is the best seller for
Google. I would continue to facilitate full disclosure.
For example, when Google Chrome has an error, it
says “aw snap, looks like we’ve got a bug in the
program” and they have quickly & simply got the user
on-board as being part of the solution and a team
player rather than feeling like they’ve got suckered by a
false promise of perfection.
The Protagonist’s Action Plan
Impact of My Decision:
• On ME: Release of control which would be initially
uncomfortable as a loss of power by a CEO.
• On my competitors: They would think it’s corporate
suicide and relish in the hope that they would gain
competitive advantages.
• On the employees: It would be a fresh and
innovative way and would build their trust &
commitment.
• On business partners & stockholders: It would be a
wary and watchful eye to see what happens.
• On our customers: Same reaction as our employees.
The Protagonist’s Action Plan
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Response to these Actions:
Competitors would step up their promotion and theme
of having the secure strategic vision.
Employees would feel “on board” and part of the
success by being kept in the know on the company’s
direction.
Business partners and stockholders would soon see
that “full disclosure” is not about finances or competitive
strategies being revealed, but it is about team and trustbuilding relations.
Customers would see and feel this trust as well as
become aligned with wanting to see Google succeed.
They would trust that Google’s true intentions are what
they said… to help people and do no evil.
What is Google Doing Now?
Google is involved in laying a fiber-optic undersea cable
between the United States and Japan (Computer World)
Google is involved in creating Android, an operating system
for phones (Computer World)
Google held a contest for third-party developers to create innovative
applications for Android such as a wayfinding applications that tap into the
handheld’s GPS chip
Google is working on utilizing facial recognition search for
untagged photos (Computer World), i.e. If a user searched for Paris
Hilton, the facial recognition technology would enable Google to bring up
untagged pictures of Paris in the search results.
Language Translation (Computer World)
Google has increased the number of languages available and now includes:
Russian, Arabic, and Hindi
What is Google Doing Now?
Energy Initiatives (Computer World)
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Using solar power which provides 30% of peak power usage at Google’s campus
Google allows employees to use hybrid cars for short-term use
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Google’s growth is unlikely to derail (Business Week)
Despite cynics claims that Google is likely to stumble, it continues to remain
profitable
There are many promising things going on at Google such as helping to make cloud
computing a reality for large and small enterprises
Google is utilizing semantic search (Google Watch)
Improves search results
Enables Google to understand documents and queries better to provide users with the
most relevant search results
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Other areas Google is becoming involved in:
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Searching for blogs (Digital Landing)
iGoogle (Digital Landing)
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A personalized home page for users
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A variety of widgets are available
Creating Google Alerts (Digital Landing)
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Users can find out about a particular topic of interest
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Google runs auto searches for users and e-mails them when alerts come up
Creating Google Groups (Digital Landing)
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Google provides group e-mail list features and additional related e-mail thread searching and online file sharing
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Similar to Yahoo!Groups