This document summarizes key information about Google from a case study. It discusses Google's origins and mission, its popularity due to relevant search results, speed, trust, and lack of paid placements. It also describes how Google maintains its competitive advantage through infrastructure, services like Maps and News, and its Android mobile operating system. Popular search queries in Gulf countries from Google Zeitgeist reports are listed, and how marketers can use this information for search engine optimization and understanding consumer interests.

1. AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF SHARJAH
MASS COMMUNICATION DEPARTMENT
Diana Al-Laham 30945
Hanin Ruwaished 30403
Dr. Ibahrine
March 22, 2012
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2. Table of Contents
Title Page
What is Google? 1
Why is Google so Popular? 1
How can Google Maintain its Competitive Advantage? 2
Key Features of Google Digital Marketing 2
Popular Queries in Countries Around Gulf Region 3
Marketers make Use of the Zeitgeist Information 3-4
References 5
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3. What is Google?
Google is a multinational, publicly-traded organization built around the company’s incredibly
popular search engine. Google includes other activities such as Internet analytics, cloud
computing, advertising technologies, Web applications, and browser and operating system
development (N.A, 2012).
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful. Google, originally called BackRub, first started in 1995 when two graduate students,
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, met at Stanford University in California. In 1996, Brin and Page
worked together on a research project that was to become the Google search engine. They
acquired financial support to help them get started, and in 1998 they began operations from a
garage-based office in California. In December 1998, Google was listed as one of the top 100
websites and search engines (N.A, 2012).
Google has taken the last 10 years of systems software research out of university labs, and built
its own production quality system. Google built a distributed computing platform that can
manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 servers all together. It includes a petabyte, fault tolerant
file system, distributed RPC code, network shared memory, and process migration (Willison,
2004).
Why is Google Popular?
This search engine is popular for several reasons. First, it is the only search engine that has the
capability to search 9 million Universal Resource Locators (URLs). It slowly searches and
alphabetically lists various pages at the same time and increases the chances of getting what a
person is searching for. This allows for relevant results which can match with the criteria that a
person is looking for (Blachman and Peek, 2011).
Second, Google is fast and simple to use; it finds the most results in less than a second. It also
shows the stored version of the web page; it provides results with information and links related to
a person’s search. Thus, this helps to make and find the searches (Blachman and Peek, 2011).
Third, Google gained its trust among many people. People in big companies advertise on
Google. Also, there are many choices in this search engine as it can provide different results of
information and choices for different countries. Furthermore, Google is the most dominant
search engine on the web since it has entered in almost every aspect of our daily life (Blachman
and Peek, 2011).
Finally, some search engines sell their results. A sold result shows that a link to the buyer’s page
is located at the top of the results page. However, Google does not sell its results. If a web page
appears in Google’s results, Google thinks it is a relevant result for the person’s search, not
because Google has been paid to post it there (Blachman and Peek, 2011).
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4. How can it maintain its competitive advantage?
Google’s supply chain is made up of fiber networks, data centers, switches, servers and storage
devices. Google's purpose is to deliver search results as fast as possible at as low a cost as
possible.
Google's business model breaks down into three data inputs.
Relevancy of results.
Speed of search.
Cost of executing a search query.
Google's competitive advantage is that it holds the position as the dominant search engine in the
world. Google's company designed an infrastructure that offers a high speed search engine tool,
which keeps its users coming back for more. However, a fast search is not the only advantage
Google offers to its users, in fact the Google's company provides tools and services such as the
Google Toolbar, Google Maps, Google Earth and Google News. The toolbar presents a way for
users to conduct a search without leaving their homepage. It also makes it easier for users to
navigate through the website (How Google Maintains, 2010).
Furthermore, Google has expanded to mobile phones with the Android operating system, which
delivers Google services and features as mobile applications. These strategies allow Google to
reach out to consumers and create a competitive advantage (How Google maintains, 2010).
Google has a competitive advantage over Facebook and Twitter. For Example Google provides
information that is useful to users, however Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, are social
networking websites. Facebook cares about who you are, and what would you like to share with
the world. Twitter is a social network that allows you to express your thoughts and ideas in 140
characters. Both social networks are very popular amongst internet users, however both are very
limited in terms of information provided, in the sense where Google's function is more a variety
of different types of services. Google has built and maintained a competitive advantage based on
search engine differentiation where they focus on innovation and common characteristics within
diversity (Hummer, 2006).
Key Features of Google Digital Marketing
Google provides several features further than the original word-search facility. Such features
include:
Weather forecasts
Stock Quotes
Time Zones
Maps
Personalized dashboards (allow you to set up dashboards that consist of information that
is purposeful to you.)
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5. Also, you can search on Google by "search by image" and " Google voice search.”
Popular Queries in Countries Around the Gulf Region
According to Google Zeitgeist, annual reports about what captured the world’s attention, there
have been many queries about interests and passion in the past years around the Gulf region.
Listed below are some queries:
Burj Khalifa
World Cup 2010
Social Networking Sites
Budget Airlines such as Fly Dubai and Air Arabia
Launch of new Blackberry Smartphone
What is a recession?
What is GDP?
The Indian Elections and Swine Flu news search
Beijing 2008
The Emirates
Atlantis
Emirates ID
iPhone
MySpace
Wikipedia
(2011).
Marketers make Use of the Zeitgeist Information
Marketers can benefit from the information on Google Zeitgeist through several ways. First,
Google Zeitgeist helps marketers know about the most effective ways of search engine
optimization (SEO); which is crucial to make web pages and online content at the top of the
search list. It helps marketing professionals gain insight about what internet users and consumers
search online, as well as it provides a list of the top searches of the year (Igor, 2008).
In addition, several strategies of search engine optimization are helpful to attract the movement
on URL links. To accomplish this, good quality content is built to create and increase interest
among readers. Next, incoming links, called Link Building, are created in web content. The
concept of Link Building draws search engine creeps to the chosen URL (Igor, 2008).
Moreover, social media and marketing is another powerful and easy medium to promote URL
links. One can increase the movement and online visitors on links submitted on popular websites
of social media like Facebook or Twitter; which remove links of popular content. However,
Google Zeitgeist saves all popular yearly searches on the net and helps SEO marketing experts
choose the best key phrases. Therefore, one can decide what kind of content the online audience
demand (Igor, 2008).
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6. Furthermore, websites for technology, food, or travel can increase their visitors by viewing the
top ten keyword searches displayed on Google Zeitgeist. Also, marketers can view popular
searches based on various subjects like locations, nationalities, or celebrities. This means that
they can know what were the most popular keywords used. For example, if a list of popular
online searches was used on basis of location, “Rebecca Black” can be found on the top of the
American online search (Igor, 2008).
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7. References
Blachman, N., & Peek, J. (2011, March 16). Why is Google Popular?. GoogleGuide. Retrieved
March 2, 2012, from http://www.googleguide.com/searchleader.html
Hummer, B. (2006). Google strategic plan. Unpublished raw data, MGT 578, Retrieved March 5,
2012, from http://www.dailyspeculations.com/google-paper-ellison.html
Igor, B. (2008). Effective and Easy SEO Marketing with Google Zeitgeist. IdeaMarketers.
Retrieved March 3, 2012, from http://www.ideamarketers.com/?articleid=2858494
N.A. (2012). Google. TechTarget. Retrieved March 2, 2012, from http://searchcio-
midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/Google
N.A. (2010, March31). How Google maintains its competitive advantage. SmartAdvantage.
Retrieved March 5, 2012, from http://blog.smartadvantage.com/competitive-advantage-
blog/bid/44872/How-Google-Maintains-Its-Competitive-Advantage
Willison, S. (2004, April 5). What is Google?. Simon Willison’s Weblog. Retrieved March 2,
2012, from http://simonwillison.net/2004/apr/5/whatisgoogle/
Zeitgeist: Search patterns, trends, and surprises. (2011). Retrieved March 3, 2012, from
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/yearend.html
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