Personal & Career Development Programme - Essay Example

You will carry out a literature search on a business in a specific sector which forms a short report in the journal. The focus of the research should be on their business model, products or services, potential business developments, customer or client base. This is designed to help you prepare for questions in an interview which ask you to display knowledge of their business operations. In carrying out the research you should avoid relying solely on information published by the organization and look for independent views and analysis.

Google Business Model Google has made enviable strides in a very short time. The company is only in its thirteenth year but it is bigger than many older companies (Google, 2011). The main mode of income generating at goggle is advertising (Betz, 2011). They place advertisements on various products, which they provide free (Murthy, 2007). They even allow users to share in the advertising fees through Google Adwords and Google Adsense (Hill, 2004). In short, Google provides multiple platforms for advertisers to put their advertisements and provides services to end users without cost.

Products and Services Google has a very wide range of products. The most popular ones are the Google search engine and Gmail (Hochman, 2010). The search engine helps internet users to find information from the internet based on keywords (Girard, 2009). Gmail on the other hand is a free email platform that allows users to send and receive emails among other services. Other service offered by Google is the YouTube service. This was an acquisition by Google to help in prop its web presence. In addition, there are services such as Blogger through which Google to give free blogs.

Potential Business Developments Google has been in the process of improving its services (Gaist, 2009). One of the recent, changes are the upgrade of the appearance of its search engine and the impending system wide change of the appearance of the Gmail email platform. As a company, Google generally avoids making too many changes on its products, opting to build on existing ones by adding optional functionalities to them (Rothkopf, 2009). A case in point is the recent introduction of Google+, which is Google’s attempt at entering the social media scene.

It is simply an extension of Gmail. This ideal also shows in Google’s concept of a single sign in. Once a user signs in to any of Google’s applications, they can access all other products provided they registered to use it. Another interesting development that Google is pushing through is Google Places. This application will make it possible for people to know in real time where others are, based on their cell phone signal (Bailyn & Bailyn, 2011). This product is yet to hit the market in a big way, but it will become significant when people get comfortable with others knowing where they are at any one time.

Customer Base Google’s customers are the advertisers who put up their adverts on the platforms Google provides (Betz, 2011). End users of the services are not the customers of the company (Paliwal, 2006). They do not generate revenue for Google. They simply provide Google with potential consumer groups to whom the company’s customers can advertise. Reference List Bailyn, E. & Bailyn, B., 2011. Outsmarting Google: SEO Secrets to Winning New Business. Que Publishing. Betz, F., 2011.