Competitive Advantage of Google+ - Essay Example

The company provides its market with the best quality search engine compared to the others, ensuring that the market always prefers the search engine. Technology investment has been the other factor that the company has applied to gain a competitive edge over the other companies providing search engine services. Google+ is the search engine company that has invested a lot of money in technology, to keep its services at the best of other search engine providers (Laudon, 286). The company keeps updating its technology after a short duration to incorporate new features that make their services more appealing and satisfying to its customers.

Monetizing the company’s services is yet another factor that has enabled the company to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors (Laudon, 301). The company has been able to create money value out of the various products and services it offers through integrating advertisements in all of its provisions. This has enhanced its ability to become the most profitable search engine company and enabled it to invest in more sophisticated technology than all the other competitors in that market segment.

Google+ search engine, based on the porter’s value chain, holds a competitive advantage with activities such as supplier power, through differentiation (Laudon, 306). Suppliers deliver material to the company, which are differentiated and specialized, and of interest to the company’s customer base. Another value chain factor is the supplier’s volume, which allows the company to create pages that rank their materials based on the volume inputs by the suppliers. Barriers to entry are the other value chain activity that allows it to obtain a competitive edge over the others in the same market segment.

These value chain activities have enabled the company to generate about 50% of all web searches (Laudon, 308). Applying Barney’s criteria, the organization’s competitive advantage is centered on some major factors, namely technology, brand, and monetization of services. These being heterogeneous factors, they ensure that the competitive advantage of the company is sustainable. The market objectives and strategic objectives that Google+ needs to adapt in order to remain competitive in the market are technological innovations and diversification.

This would ensure that the company consistently introduces its new and innovative products that are relevant to its customers while increasing the range of products in offer