MBA at Quinnipiac University assignment

1. By: Katrina Lennon

2. Brief History
• Began in in 1996 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Stanford University graduate students, started a search
engine called “BackRub”
• Worked out the kinks in a garage
• In 1998 they became the incorporation that is now known as Google.
• In 1998, Sun co-founder, Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Google a check for $100,000 to help kick start the entity.
• In 1999 Google already outgrew their garage office.
• By 2000, Google started catering to other people in the world and released 10 language variations
• The next 9 years brings rapid growth achieving many great milestones.
• Currently have their headquarters in California, 20 other locations in the US and 55 throughout the world with
over 20,000 employees , 94 subsidiaries, 84.77% market share and 2010 revenue of $8.44 billion.
• Classified as an Information Retrieval Service.

3. Products & Services
• Search (Image, Books, Scholar, • Development (Android, App
Video, Photos) Engine, Open Social)
• Desktop
• Mapping (City Tours, Google Maps,
• Stand alone applications (Chrome,
Google Earth, Gmail, Picassa) Sky Map, Transit)
• Extensions (Toolbar, Dashboard
Widgets for Mac, Blogger Web • Statistics (Analytics, Insights,
Comments) Trends)
• Mobile • Other (Health, Labs)
• Online (Calendar, Buzz, News)
• Downloadable (sync, Voice, Goggles) • Hardware (Google Mini, Nexus
One)
• Web
• Account Management (dashboard)
• Services (Google Crisis Response,
• Advertising (Adsense, Adwords)
Google Public DNS)
• Communication and Publishing (Apps,
Blogger, Docs)

4. A Look into the Industry
• Power of Suppliers- Weak
• Google has 84.77% of the market making them very powerful
• They can negotiate the terms of a relationship easily
• Power of Customers- Weak
• 97% of Google’s revenue comes from ads
• Google’s market share of 84.77% means very high visibility with ads
• If they went to Bing the market share is only 3.89% meaning lower
visibility
• Rivals- Moderate
• Microsoft’s Bing, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo

5. A Look into the Industry
• Threat of New Entrants- Low
• Google has 84.77% of the market
• The next largest market share is held by Yahoo representing only
5.69%
• Importance of creating new technologies
• Large amount of money for R&D
• Threat of Substitutes- Weak
• Price sensitive?
• Search engines are free
• Money comes in with advertising: people could advertise elsewhere
but won’t see as much traffic
• More easily available?
• With Google’s huge market share, can be argued that it is harder for
customer’s target market to access information the customer is trying
to advertise

6. Google’s Competencies
• Core Competencies/Competitive Advantage
• Unique company culture
• Offices
• 20% time
• Innovative minds
• Distinctive Competencies
• Search
• Ads
• Apps

7. Google’s Capabilities
• Internal Processes and Systems
• Responsiveness
• Over 20 Twitter handles
• About 15 Facebook pages
• Relationships
• Employees: $1000 bonus and 10% pay raise for 2011
• Customers: always focused on giving consumers what they
want.
• Google succeeds when the consumers are happy
• Service quality
• Focus on designing, developing and delivering services
that meet and exceed user’s expectations

8. Key Resources
• Tangible • Intangible
• Technologies • Brand
• PidgeonRank • #1 brand in 2010 by The
• Google Analytics Consumerist
• Android OS • Intellectual Capital
• Google Chrome • Googlers
• Financial resources • HR
• Gross Profit Margin: 64.47% • Hire based on intelligence and
innovation
• Operating profit Margin:
35.40%
• Net Profit Margin: 29%
• Receivable Turnover: 53
• Asset Turnover: 51%
• Return on Equity: 18.3%

9. Knowledge Based View
• Google looks for tacit knowledge – employees minds and skill sets
• When hiring Google looks for knowledge rather than experience
• This means that “googlers” are very diverse allowing for different
backgrounds to work together and to bounce ideas around to reach
unique ideas
• Google works hard to keep employees happy
• Rock walls
• Pool tables
• Comfy chairs
• Snack rooms
• Gym
• Additional benefits: 10% raise and $1,000 bonus for 2011

10. Dynamic & Disruptive
Technologies
• Google works very hard at being at the forefront of
innovation giving consumers what they want and creating
needs for them
• Dynamic – Google anticipates shifts in market and pays
attention to oncoming trends
• Social trend with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. so they
created social search
• Disruptive – Google tries to “disrupt” the market by
introducing innovative products and services
• How they introduced fast and relevant search through their
search algorithm
• Continue to revolutionize the way people search by
introducing things like real-time and social search

11. SWOT Analysis
• Strengths • Opportunities
• Strong brand name • Using higher value content on
• Reliable, accurate & fast the web
searches • Localized searches
• Offers many products and • Create more services for the
services growing smartphone market
• Intelligent & innovative • New acquisitions
employees
• Constantly innovating & creating • Threats
a need for it’s products and • Lose control over indexing policy
services
• Competition from yahoo and
Bing
• Weaknesses
• Potential privacy lawsuits
• Main source of revenue is
advertising • Can lose it’s easy to use
interface
• Spammers take advantage of
Google’s ranking technology • Too much integration with other
companies can taint their brand
• Lack of presence in social- name
networking
• Products & services very
heterogeneous

12. Recommendations
• Find other sources of revenue
• Tighten security measures on their search
algorithm to prevent spammers
• Delve deeper into the social networking world
• Pay more attention to privacy issues
• Don’t lose site of core competencies and always
keep the consumer in mind offering easy-to-use
interfaces for all services