Conclusion - The Future of Google

(Photo from April 9, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek)

Google has 31% of the online advertising market revenue, and 56% of the market share for online searches. The company has nowhere to go but up, I'm not sure but I believe reading somewhere it said Google spends 20%-25% of its resources pursuing new ventures.

Google and Microsoft are currently both pursuing the acquisition of doubleclick, the number 1 online ad agency. Also Google has come out with its own productivity software suite including word processors, spreadsheets, database software, presentation software, instant messenging and video conference software to compete with Microsoft in the corporate arena. Microsoft charges about $500 a year for its suite per user, whereas Google will only charge $50.

Now that Google is entering the software market, there soon may be nothing people do without doing it through Google.

Google is also constantly expanding its massive server farms and fiber-optic capacity. Google may eventually be an alternative to the internet, by providing the same network that runs faster.

Google is also currently working on Artificial Intelligence systems, an example of that is its spell checking system, its language translator, and eventually a search engine that almost knows what you're looking for as soon as you start looking for it.

Google has bought YouTube as is currently working on a way to search for what's in a video without knowing the video name or the user who submitted it.

They are also trying to create the first online ad marketplace, like an ebay for anyone who wants to advertise. Where clients can bid in auctions for advertising spots. Google is also looking into revolutionizing television commercials, so that television commercials can be custom-tailored for each household, based on the ages and the people living in them, as well as their hobbies, interests, likes, dislikes, and shopping habits.

(Is Google Too Powerful? http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2007/03/is_google_too_p.html?chan=search)

Technology

(Photo from April 9, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek)

One of the most remarkable things about Google is how it works: "Our business relies on our software and hardware infrastructure, which provides substantial computing resources at low cost. We currently use a combination of off-the-shelf and custom software running on clusters of commodity computers. Our considerable investment in developing this infrastructure has produced several key benefits. It simplifies the storage and processing of large amounts of data, eases the deployment and operation of large-scale global products and services, and automates much of the administration of large-scale clusters of computers." (How Google Works: http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=182560,00.asp)

"Google runs on hundreds of thousands of servers—by one estimate, in excess of 450,000—racked up in thousands of clusters in dozens of data centers around the world. It has data centers in Dublin, Ireland; in Virginia; and in California, where it just acquired the million-square-foot headquarters it had been leasing. It recently opened a new center in Atlanta, and is currently building two football-field-sized centers in The Dalles, Oregon." (How Google Works: http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=182560,00.asp)

What Google uses to be the most efficient search engine and to handle massive amount of CPU and networking workload is called Grid Computing. It is part of what is called Internet 2.0 or Web 2.0, it is the wave of the future. Grid Computing is defined as utilizing a parallel infrastructure of many computers to distribute the workload evenly by pooling or sharing multiple computers' system resources. So instead of one big all-powerful and more importantly expensive supercomputer you split it over smaller more common and cheaper computers. It is the same technology used in the Human Genome Project to map the Human Genome (which has now turned into the Human Proteonome Project) , it is the same technology SETI@home (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/) uses, and the same thing medical research companies use to find a cure for cancer.

As Google CEO Eric Schmidt states "Google does more than simply buy lots of PC-class servers and stuff them in racks, we're really building what we think of internally as supercomputers."

Google has also managed to develop portable data centers, so they can pack up a data center into a 20 or 40 foot shipping container and load it up on a tractor trailer rig to deploy anywhere. The trailer contains 5000 processors and 3.5 Petabytes of data storage space that can be delivered overnight.

What Google does with all this storage space is cache a large part of the Internet on its data centers (about 737,000,000 websites), so then it jumps from site to site through links, and creates a index. Then when someone types in a search query on http://www.google.com/ the search is then compares the query to the index and finds the best match, based on content and the number of links from other sites. The link analyzing system is called PageRank and was developed by Page and Brin, Altavista displayed the number of links associated with a site but never utilized that information. All of this happens in order to determine the best match and display them in ranking order for your convenience in just milliseconds, the time to locate your search results in always displayed in the upper right hand corner.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin also came up with BigFiles, which split large files into small pieces to be stored on many computer that are pooling their hard drive space. Google incorporates the Google File System (GFS) onto its servers that makes sure at least 3 copies are stored on separate computers to ensure data consistency and error prevention, so Google can store its data reliable on low-cost and more unreliable computers.

Google upgraded its software by creating BigTables which is a Database Management System, it stores structured data from Google, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Search History using standard relational databases such as MySQL. BigTables just breaks down tables into smaller pieces to be stored on multiple computers.

Google uses a version of RedHat Linux with kernel-level modifications by their programmers. Their Distributed Filing System is the Google Filing System, the Distributed Scheduling system is called the Global Work Queue, and their Database Management Systems are BigTables and Berkley DB which I believe is Oracle's.

http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=182560,00.asp

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.