Google Technologies - Case Study Example

13th May 2016

Abstract

Google technology is a US multinational company headquartered in Googleplex, California and producing wide range of products. Major products by the company as discussed in the paper include advertising, search engine, productivity tool for example Gmail, Google Code, Google Drive and Google for Work. Other brands include enterprise; Google Search Appliance and Google Mini, Google Translate and Nexus One phone. The company success has been achieved through the effort of Google developers. Additionally, the company has great value for its culture and employees affairs. Notable employee benefits include parental leave policies, death benefits and retirement savings plan. Google makes presentations such as Candidates@Google, Musicians@Google, Authors@Google and Women@Google through AtGoogle talks. To assist female undergraduate students taking computer science and other related courses, Google has established a mentoring program known as CodeF. The Google Doodlers have become significant aspects of improving the company logo thus creating strong customer awareness and relationship. This paper discusses the concepts of environment and philanthropy such as achieving carbon neutrality, use of renewable fuels and Google.org that Google has initiated.

Introduction

Google technology is a US multinational company specializing in wide range of products. The company which was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 is headquartered in Googleplex, California. As the result of rapid growth since it was established, the company has invested in wide product portfolio. The company aims at creating strong connection by external stakeholders through quality brands. Alberto and Patrick (2011) indicate that “Android and Chrome OS are examples of permeable interfaces between Google and the outside community” (p. 57). Google Company, whose motto is "Don't be evil", runs more than I million servers in various US data centers and across the world. With the increased use of Google products, monthly visitors have continued to increase for the last 5 years. The company is focused on providing its customers with unique experience. Regardless of the product or service they design, the company indicates that it takes great care in order to ensure that the product will ultimately meet the needs of its customers rather than only serving the company’s goals. This paper aims at discussing major aspects of Google including its emerging technologies and corporate affairs and culture.

Products and services

Advertising

The company advertising programs act as the major source of revenue. Vise (2005) denotes that “Google huge gains in profit are attributed to high revenue” (p. 37). By using the technology from DoubleClick Company, Google is able to project user interest and focuses at improving its advertising services. The company allows website owners to track how consumers or other parties use their website through Google Analytics. In its effort to improve customer awareness and streamline communication strategies with its customers, Google has two-part programs that it uses to place its advertisements in third party websites. These include Google AdSense and Google AdWords. Google AdSense assists website owners to put the company advertisements on the websites and earn revenue when the ads are clicked. On the other hand, Google AdWords allows website owners to use Google content network to display their advertisements. The company also established Demo Slam, a website that allowed it to advertise its brands and demonstrate its various technologies.

Search engine

Google Web Search, a product that was launched in 1997, has become the most utilized search engine globally. With a market share of approximately 65% in the US, Google allows more than three billion searches to be done on a daily basis. Various localized websites for example google.com site, ensures visitors can access wide range of information while making it possible to link to other sites. The use of query expansion by Google makes it possible to retrieve results. The major transformations that occur within algorithm Google include term recording which aims at reducing the work while retrieving results, stemming to improve the quality of search and limited facility to correct and form of misspellings in queries. In 2009, the company introduced Rich Snippets which included hReview, hCard and hProduct microformats. The new technologies aimed at popularizing search result pages. In addition to main aspect of searching for text, Google search has a number of special features that are activated by entering trigger words. These include weather, stock quotes, unit conversion, time, calculator, sports scores, maps, dictionary lookup and patent numbers among others.

Productivity tools

As 2004 innovation, Gmail is one of the notable webmail services that have positively impacted on online communication globally (Kevin, 2014). As the first online email services, it had more than 145 million users in 2009 and the number has been increasing on daily basis. The US government has on its part established legal mechanisms to ensure resourceful online communication. Gellman and Soltani (2013) notes that “NSA gathers huge volumes of online communications records by legally compelling U.S. technology companies, including Yahoo and Google, to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms” (p. 3). Through a programming technique known as AJAX, Gmail is interactive without refreshing the browser. Another key product that was established by Google in 2004 was Google Code. The software was important in downloading programs for free. Similarly Google Drive allows users to create and edit documents online just like the way Microsoft Word is used nowadays. Google for Work on the other hand provides customizable format of various products of the company. This service features other applications provided by the company including Google Calendar, Gmail, Sites, Drive, Slides, Docs and Groups.

Enterprise products

The expansive customer base has made Google to initiate brands that caters for their needs regardless of the size of the customers. For example, Google Search Appliance, that was established in 2002 focused on providing technology for large companies while Google Mini, that was launched in 2005 aimed at providing solutions to smaller organizations. Google Apps make it possible for firms to use applications such as Google Docs and Gmail into their domain. The launching of Google Analytics was another step in improving marketing strategies of the company including integrating data and improving customer journey for enterprise class marketers.

Other Google products

The technologies provided by Google are highly demanded at global level. The introduction of Google Translate in 2006 and 2007 as rule based machine translation and statistical machine translation respectively, makes it possible to translate Google images texts and speeches in more than 100 languages. As noted by Alberto and Patrick, (2011) “Language translation is widely acknowledged as a very difficult problem in computer science” (p. 57). Google News, that was launched in 2002 made Google and other companies to automatically summarize articles from other websites. As competition in the technology became stiff, with Apple creating high quality iPhone, Google also embarked on extensive research to invest in Android technology. The company produced its own mobile phone referred to as Nexus One in 2010. The smartphone used the super LCD display technology which increased its color accuracy and power efficiency. After one year, the phone was globally been distributed by Brightstar, a major partner in Google supply chain. Google other brands include Google Wallet, a wireless payment method, Google+, a social networking service, Google Shopping Express, Google Alerts, Google camera and DeepDream, a software that adopted convolutional neural network to create images.

Google developers

Google developers refer to the company’s site for technical resources, software development tools and application programming interfaces. The site contains information on using blogs and discussion groups. Google developer groups involve tech talks, demonstrations or few people who are interested in Google’s developer technology.

Corporate culture and affairs

Employees

Google is noted as one of the best companies to work for. With more than 47,000 employees, the company has emulated effective leadership that acts as a guidance to maintain a productive workforce (Liedtke, 2008). The company top management is led by Sundar Pichai the CEO. As a way motivating its employees, Google adopts a policy known as Innovation Time Off. In this program, the company engineers are allowed to spend 20% of their working time on projects the wish to undertake. Key implication of this independent policy to Google is innovation and development of new competitive services such as Orkut, Gmail and AdSense. According to Marissa Mayer, more than 50% of new brands in 2005 came out of the Innovation Time Off. Google values employees’ families and the benefits programs it provides and onsite amenities are focused at supporting the workers and their families. Ronald and Erika (2009) depict that “Google employees work hard, yet have fun at the same time” (p. 2). Notable benefits include parental leave policies, death benefits and retirement savings plan. The company offers healthcare services and onsite for example physical therapy, chiropractic and massages.

AtGoogle talks

AtGoogle talks entail the presentations done by the company personnel at various locations globally. The key features types include Candidates@Google, Musicians@Google, Authors@Google and Women@Google. In its effort to create the culture of technology and improve awareness among other companies globally, the company also undertakes Google Tech Talks whose objective is to cover wide range of technical topic.

CodeF

Google as an employer values the development of its potential employees during their studies at university level. For example, the company established CodeF, a mentoring program for female undergraduate students taking computer science and other related courses. The program which lasts for 12 weeks has positively impacted on the number of women working in technology industry in the US and across countries where Google has offices.

Google Doodle

Google Doodle refers to the alterations done on the company logo with the objective of celebrating events, people, holidays and achievements. For example, the first doodle that was designed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998 was made to honor the Burning Man Festival, which DAVID, indicates made “Burning Man both a social gathering and a highly personal sojourn” (p. 30).Through the efforts of Google Doodlers, various designs of doodles have been organized and published. In the last six years, Google increased complexity and frequency of doodles. Additionally, the company started adding hyperlinks to the Doodle. To enhance creativity among students, the company also holds Doodle 4 Google competition, with the winning Doodle being displayed on Google homepage in different countries.

Environment and philanthropy

As a technology company with global operations, Google has a duty to take care of the environment. The company aims at achieving carbon neutrality during its activities. For example, in 2010, the data centers carbon emissions were below 1.5 million metric tons, which was quite low as compared to other global companies. As noted by Kardes et al (2015) “consumers are motivated by organizations that value their surrounding” (p. 28). Through the use of renewable fuels, Google has continued to save significant amount of energy. The company has also embarked on providing financial support to initiatives whose objective is to lower carbon emission (Jack, 2011). Google.org was formed in 2005 as the charitable arm of the company. The main objectives of the initiative are to deal with global poverty, create climate change awareness and improve public health at the international level. Significant recent projects included Google Person Finder to deal with disaster management, Google Flu and Dengue Trends to address health matters and discounted access to some Google services for firms.

Conclusion

Google product diversification strategy has played a vital role in expanding its customer base. Despite stiff competition from Amazon, the company has continued to enjoy wide customer base. Most consumers view Google as a search engine and email provider, making the number to increase drastically over the last 5 years as the use of Gmail and internet services increase. One of the most important products for Google is advertising. As the major source of revenue, advertising generated $67.39 billion in 2015. The company uses Google AdSense and Google AdWords to place advertisements in third parties’ websites. As a major search engine, Google controls approximately 65% of the US market with more than three billion searches done on daily basis (Gordon, 2011). Google uses hReview, hCard and hProduct microformats technologies to popularize search result pages. As one of the productivity tool, Gmail has continued to be reliable way of communication among internet users. This has been achieved through the effective programming that Goggle has initiated. Enterprise products that have continued to offer sustainable solutions to companies include Google Search Appliance and Google Mini. As Google continues undertaking extensive research and providing its employees with Innovation Time Off, more products with unique features has made the company to attain a competitive position in the technology industry. Additionally, the company success is related to its positive relationship with external stakeholders due to its AtGoogle talks, carbon emission policy, CodeF, Doodle 4 Google competition and Google.org, the charitable arm of the company.