Business Strategy

If you ask anyone, what is Google? Most people would respond by saying that it is just a search engine website. However, Google is much more than just a search engine website. Google has established from a search engine to a business powerhouse that millions of people use on a daily basis. Google’s success is largely due to its huge popularity. As a result of being so popular, companies, organizations, corporations, and almost every type of business knew it could benefit from Google. Google used E-commerce by allowing certain websites to be “featured” at the very top of your search query. For example, if you were to type in certain common goods or services available to be purchased online, you would find that one or two websites will be highlighted in blue at the top of the page. These sites are their sponsored links. Also, along the right hand side, there will be even more sponsored links posted. For instance, if you were to type in “Clothing” as your search query, you would find that such websites as Macys.com, Nordstrom.com, and Target.com come up as sponsored links.

The internet business model that Google uses is Business to Business. However, it can be seen as Business to Consumer because many people use Google as a means of finding a certain website to purchase something. It uses Business to Business because other businesses pay Google to be featured as “sponsored links” at the top and right hand side of the search query. Google's top line and bottom line initiatives are already working as efficiently as they can. Also Google is pursuing new streams of revenue everyday.

Among the Five Forces Model, Supplier Power is among the most powerful forces. Although there are many search engine websites, Google is the most powerful and popular one. Businesses tend to prefer to be featured on Google because of its popularity. For this reason, Buyer Power is not very powerful. The threat of substitute products or services is always there for Google. There are numerous search engine websites that people can use, such as Yahoo, AOL search, and MSN search. However these websites offer so many other products and services that most people don’t think of these websites as search engines. The threat of new entrants is extremely low. Google is extremely popular and it would be very difficult for a new company or a new search engine to begin giving Google competition. Rivalry among existing competitors is also relatively low. Again, there are several other search engine websites, however, the competition is very low and Google stands alone with almost no competition.

The History of Google

Google began with the nickname "BackRub" because of the way it checked backlinks to estimate how important a site was. Pages that had the most links from other highly relevant pages, were thought to be the most important associated with the search.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. They registered the domain name on September 14, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 7, 1998. The ever-disagreeing and arguing couple were fascinated by the idea of using multiple low-cost and low-end computers as opposed to big expensive servers. The initial funding amount raised amounted to almost $1.1M, including a $100,000 check from Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.

In March of 1999, Google moved out of the garage and into offices at 165 University Avenue, in Palo Alto. The same year after outgrowing the first and two other complexes they settled at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, which is now home of the infamous Googleplex.

Google slowly built a loyal following, during the explosive growth of Internet users from 1999 to the present day, because of its efficiency, simplicity, ease of use, and uncluttered design.

Google makes most of its income from advertising: Google AdWords allows Web advertisers to display advertisements in Google's search results and the Google Content Network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. Google AdSense Website owners can display advertisements on their own site, and earn money every time it is clicked.

Google has since added many features to their website including: language translating tools, caching websites, Froogle shopping tool, Google Image search, Blogging, Google Maps, and most recently in 2006 the purchase of YouTube for $1.65B that rocked the business world. They have recently replaced their own Google Video search with that of YouTube's. Google is seemingly unstoppable in their quest to revolutionize the way people use the Internet. With new projects such as converting old, out of copyright texts and books into free digital formats, which one day may make Libraries a thing of the past.

There are many more present and future features and products that have not been included.

CEO

Dr. Eric Schmidt is the Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Executive Officer. Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited Eric Schmidt from Novell, a software company for the “open enterprise.” There he led Novell’s strategic planning, management and technology development as chairman and CEO. At Google, he focuses on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google’s rapid growth as a company. Also, he ensures that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. Eric shares the responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Eric Schmidt has a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University, and a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California-Berkeley. In 2006, Eric was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which recognized his work on "the development of strategies for the world's most successful Internet search engine company." Eric's Novell experience culminated a 20-year record of achievement as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and developer of great technologies. His well-seasoned perspective perfectly complements Google's needs as a young and rapidly growing search engine with a unique corporate culture.

Google

Google originally began as a research project in January of 1996. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both Ph. D. students at Stanford University. Larry Page put forward the idea that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would generate better results than existing techniques. At that time, search engines were designed to rank results according to how many times the “search term” appeared on a given website.