Value Chain Analysis - Google - Essay Example

Value Chain Analysis As a business, Google itself owes its existence to the technological era, specifically, the incredible advancements in computing power and the World Wide Web. Google Inc. has become the leader in internet search engine services and advertising. The incredible success of their search engine with its customer base of individuals and advertisers is mainly due to its innovative proprietary algorithm called PageRank. The value chain refers to a system that allows managers to understand the activities that create value for the shareholders (Netmba, 2009).

Primary ActivitiesFor the company, their primary revenue streams activities are related to target internet advertising. This PageRank system ranks the most relevant pages for the end users, while at the same time, distributes key targeted information to the advertisers. This data in term allows the advertiser to deliver relevant ads targeted to specific search queries or Web content. There is also a network of third party customers called Google Network. This network comprised of thousands of publisher’s websites is paid to deliver relevant ads to their own Web sites and customer stream using Google’s customer database.

This provides added revenues for themselves, the advertisers and of course Google, when a customer clicks a relevant ad. By providing value added services and products to its most precious assets, its end users.Secondary Activities and Technological Impact Google has managed to not only capture most of the internet search queries ,but also some of the highest internet advertising revenues of any web based company today. Although technology has been one of the critical success factors that is driving the success of Google Inc.

, their value added services and activities distinguish them from the competition. Through their partnering activities with advertisers and third party publisher websites, and the use of technology the company has achieved a great deal of success in the marketplace. Other that its core business, the company also provides web portal services such as Blogger (blogging ), Picassa (photo sharing) and Gmail their free WebMail application (Google, 2009). Other tools offered by Google to help enhance its end user’s digital experience include Google Images (online image gallery), Google News (news portal), Google Maps and Earth (interactive maps) as well as other services that help drives the digital experience of its end-users.

At the core of Google’s business is its advertising system module, which includes its AdWords and AdSense products. Its AdWords services help drive qualified customers to its advertiser’s websites and help produce sales leads. Through its AdSense services, Google provides integrated search capabilities to its customer base, further enhancing the companies lead as the premier web services provider. AdSense also helps drive targeted ads to publisher’s websites, which are precisely matched to its content and target market or user base.

Google also Google links the search capabilities of other Web sites and search engines through its “AdSense for Search” services. Google as a company is a child of the internet era. Google has achieved its success so far by a careful market assessment, keeping ahead of the competition, and focusing its efforts in maximizing its use of technology. This has in term allowed the company to provide added value to its customers and maximize operational efficiency and effectiveness of its operational and growth efforts.

Google is looking to further expand in markets such as mobile services, its new internet browser Google chrome, and other apps that will drive the continued success and growth for the company as a whole. By the end of 2007 the company in less than 10 years grew from a lowly internet start-up, to a company with over 17,000 employees, and in 20 countries worldwide. For the end of 2007 Google owned over 50 other companies and reported net income of over 4.2 billion dollars and assets valued at over 25 billion dollars.

ReferencesGoogle.com (2009). Investors Relations. Retrieved April 23, 2009 from http://investor.google.com/order.htmlNetmba.com (2009). Value Chain Analysis. Retrieved April 24, 2009 from http://www.netmba.com/strategy/value-chain/