Googles Comparative Management - Term Paper Example

Google’s Comparative Management Contents Cultural Dimension of Google 2 Revenue Earning Potential of Google 3 Google’s International Operations 5 Competitive Parameters of Google 7 Conclusions 8 References 9 Introduction Google was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two Stanford graduates. The company was able to bring such a revolution in the market that by June 2000, It was able to establish itself as world’s most used search engine. There USP being billion page index that they introduced in the market. The popularity of Web wide world had increased the usage of Web to search information. Google was one of the pioneers to introduce easy and fast search. There technique of PageRank gained them more popularity. PageRank was used to measure the importance and relevance of a website based on the back links the site had from other famous sites. The AdWords introduced by Google gave many companies to advertise their products and website on web. AdWords gives the client the ability to select the relevant key words they prefer. Whenever these key words appear in the search the websites which have chosen these keywords will be displayed. Google has been able to change the concept of viral marketing altogether (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 200). Cultural Dimension of Google Google has been able to change a lot of traditional corporate work culture. Google has always promoted work with fun concept. They believe in keeping their work place playful yet efficient. Google management does not believe in serious nature of work, they believe that it is only when the employees are happy that they will be more efficient and creative in their work. When Google went for global expansion, their offices in all the countries had the work culture. The employees were never asked to come in formal attire. The aesthetics of the offices all over were also done with a casual attitude. Where other corporates promoted business like attitude in all their aspects, Google stuck to their core belief that work can be fun. It was a little difficult for employees in countries like Britain and other European Union countries to adapt to Google’s work culture. The informal way of conducting themselves in work place is an alien thing for these countries that associate work with serious attitude. Google has been known to promote ethnic expression at work place (Hamen, 2003). The Google management encourages their employees to mingle with each other. They encourage people hailing from different countries and communities to interact with each other. This helps the employees to broaden their thought process. The set up in all Google offices is done in such a way that all employees have their meals together in cafeteria. Google also is famous for encouraging women employment in many countries to promote gender equality. The employees are provided with all the facilities like food, massage parlour and pool table etc. in the office complex itself. However, Google does stress enough importance on performance also. All employees are expected to perform to the best of their capability. The raise and promotions are based on the performance of the employee. An employee who is able to perform brilliantly while having fun is an ideal employee for Google. Google does not want its employee to lose focus from their jobs. The facility provided by them is to facilitate more productivity not divert the focus of the employees. The rapid growth of Google in different countries confirms the business viability of their unconventional ways. The business model of Google has raised many objections in many countries. Many countries like France and China do not agree to their business model. Google had to modify many of the original products they offered to accommodate country specific demands and laws (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 202). Revenue Earning Potential of Google Focusing on the revenue earning dimension of the company it is found that in the previous days Google used to earn revenues through licensing activities. The company used to license its searching services to link with other potential websites. Google’s earning potential was expanded through the designing of the online advertising services domain to help potential companies advertise their product and service offerings through its web sphere. The product and the service producers advertising the same through Google’s website were required to make considerable amount of payments to the company depending on the number of frequencies in which such commodities or services were advertised. This revenue dimension of the company was further enhanced through the launching of AdWords in which the advertisers are required to render payments based on the frequency in which visitors entering the Google’s website tend to click on the relevant advertisements. In fact, with the passage of time the advertising services rendered by Google were further enhanced by tying up the advertising links to other social networking dimensions. Through such services the advertisers gained the views of several people. However this service also helped the company to gain another extra dimension in the revenue paradigm. It is found that Google owing to the above services happened to gain a huge revenue growth pertaining to advertising measured along the period ranging from 2002 to 2008. The amount of advertising revenues increased to manifold amounts along the period from around $ 411 million to around $ 21123 million. This shows the potential of the advertising services rendered by the company in helping it to achieve huge growth in the revenue structures. Further reflecting on the international dimension it is observe that advertisement and other online operations of the company outside the United States market contributed to a huge chunk of revenues which escalated from 39 percent on an average measured along the four quarters of the 2005 period to around 51 percent measured along the same manner in the 2008 period. Moreover to enhance on its online services the company started acquiring potential online services companies like You Tube which helped the users to post multimedia activities like videos. Acquiring of another online advertising company also helped Google get the user base to the website of such companies. This helped to enhance the revenue and market potential of Google in the long run (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 201). Google’s International Operations In the international scale Google’s operations countered potential obstacles from the difference in cultural dynamics pertaining to the different countries in which Google has its units. The different countries like France and Germany of Europe and Japan and China in the East. The same can be analyzed more specifically as follows. Germany In Germany Google’s e-mail service came under threat. Daniel Giersch, a venture capitalist from Germany sued Google on the ground of infringement of trademark. Giersch’s email was also promoted as Gmail. Google did contest the case but lost the case and was forced to remove the Gmail service from its German service. The German government collaborated with the France government to develop an alternative and advanced search engine. However Germany pulled out from the collaboration in 2007, to setup their own separate operation Theseus (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 203) . France The French government was very alarmed by Google’s expansion in France. In the year 2000 Google launched the French subsidiary Google.fr. Google.fr was successful in gaining business and it encouraged Google to take up the local niche market in France. French dialects like Breton, Basque and Corsican were incorporated in Google.fr services. This alarmed the local French Government and the French It companies. The business practice followed by Google was questioned by many. Google was accused of breaking the French Law of Copy right. Many companies sued Google for misguiding user by displaying their trademark for other operations. Google’s initiative of digitalizing all the books in Cambridge and Harvard library was also seen as a business market which was being created by Google. In France Google lost most of the copyright cases lodged against it Theseus (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 201) . Japan. In Japan Google faced the same problem. The trade protectionism by Japan government initiated a government sponsored project with ten partners. The Japanese government was already troubled by the cross border companies like Yahoo and AJ dominating the Japanese market. Having foreign players dominating the market made Japanese government realize that the Japan industries were lacking technology know how in IT sector (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 203). China. In China Google faced problem with the Government policies. In the year 2009 Google accused Chinese government of hacking many of the e-mails provided by Google. The cultural difference in China made it difficult for Google to enter the Chinese market. The presence of many global players like Yahoo in China also made it difficult for Google to have the dominance in China. The internet revolution in China makes it a viable market and Google is expanding the operation in China (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 204). Competitive Parameters of Google The competitive parameters of Google can be studied based on the international operational aspects of the firm. It is observed that outside United States the company faced significant threats from major European nations like France and Germany. The companies in these nations suffered from the fear that Google being a States based company possess the potential of eating up their business shares. Again, Google in its bid to do business in the Asia-Pacific region also countered obstacles owing to the existence of smaller search engines. These companies operating in the Asia-Pacific region also rendered potential hindrances to the internationalisation of Google suffering from the fear that Google’s domain might fully eat up their user circles. However, Google despite such potential obstacles went on to enhance its research and development functions in the European soil. Google to enhance its competitive position also targeted partnership activities with several key digital players in the Japanese market. This helped Google to enhance its search engine services dimension to other mobile gadgets and similar portable devices. Despite the potential competition that Google faced in the European markets the large number of research and development activities helped the company to enhance its market share in both the markets of Germany and France. Further Google’s operation in the local markets of Asia also faced severe competition owing to the change in the culture and performance matrix. It is found that Google’s operation in China faced severe competition owing to the existence of local search engines like Baidu. This search engine which catered to the large number of Chinese consumers is found to cater to the Chinese culture profoundly and hence offered potential competition to Google. Focusing on the global landscape it is observed that potential search engines like Yahoo render huge amount of pressure to Google. Similarly the government of many nations also endeavour to build up subsidised search engines which also would render potential competition to Google. Despite this competitive scenario the search engine Google works to build in a separate segment in its website which would mainly cater to the cultural aspects of the regional population. This part like Google India would help the visitors get the feel of visiting one of their local search engines and would not provide an American image. This feature of Google helps the company to get an enhanced market share in the international arena despite such potential competitive barriers in action (Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan, 202, 204). Conclusions Google’s international operations helped the company to open several units in different countries of the world. The company which mainly operates based on its search engine also happens to gain huge amount of revenues from several product and service advertisers advertising their offerings through Google’s website. Google happened to sophisticate the advertising programs to include specialised services which both lured the advertisers and also helped the company large amount of revenues. Again Google’s operation in many countries reflected a number of potential obstacles which the company faced owing to difference in culture and legislative barriers. Further web portals and existing search engines in these countries also suffered from a fear that the American search engine Google would eat up their market share and thus rendered potential obstacles to Google. However, Google did not deter from such threats and went on to render potential research and development activities to help maximise the rate of return from its operations. The company also strategized its operations by forming potential alliances with other firms in countries like Japan which dealt with the production of gadgets like cell phones and other portable devices. This engagement further helped Google in enhancing its market share and revenue operations along the international scale. References Google’s Country Experiences: France, Germany, Japan. 2009. IBS CDC. Hamen, E. Susan. Google: The Company and Its Founders. ABDO, 2011. Read More