Professional management skills Analysis of Google case

Résumé du document

The search engine Google has grown up as an information portal company. Google's growth story fascinates and intrigues everyone as it unveils many innovative phenomena and springs surprises to its competitors. This company is seen as a pioneer and an innovative leader which is always ahead of its peers. Its growth and expansion stories amaze the economic world. In this assessment, we will draw a brief analysis of the success of Google and try to understand its market position among its competitors.

Google's people management is also recognized as innovative one. Founders did not want a usual hierarchical way of working, they emphasize team work and encourage each employee to develop ideas and personal projects for their company. The rule of 20% of allocated time for personal projects for employees was born to allow Google to create a real group dynamic and helps people feel concerned about their company.

Majority of the launched innovative concepts came from those employees' research and initiative. Every project is studied and evaluated by collaborators, and none of them are overlooked. Google wants to have the cream of PhD and scientists; to lure them, they offer freedom in research and support. Innovation is present in every management grade, because there is no hierarchical segmentation, and not manymanagers. Team work, middle management, innovation, support and corporate culture are Google's values.

Extraits

[...] So, my recommendation will be to build a full-fledged portal like Yahoo, but with the Google style. The aim is not to copy what have already been done, but to still innovate and creative. For example, it could be interesting to personalize the website for the user, or to reference each site of Google Google Inc, Harvard Business School, Thomas R.Eisenmann and Kerry Herman, February Do you view Google's distinctive governance structure, corporate culture and organizational processes as strengths or potential limitations? [...]

[...] They are the major actors of the search business. Portals like Lycos, Excite, or Altavista still exist but are minimal against the three giants. Google and Yahoo had more than 67% of searches shares only in the US in 2005 and Microsoft around 10%. This means there is few market shares to capture for the others ones, because the search business is already controlled by the three majors. Half of search portals failed to deliver right and adapted results and Google, besides creating and implementing paid-listing system, launch the first objective and concrete page-rank. [...]

[...] Google is also known by its original services, such as Froogle, Base, Google Desktop, and so on. Even if its core business is the online search, it progressively extends to others domains on the Internet. Google main interest is to constantly innovate, disturb, surprise and also scare the other majors by its actions. In order to distinguish itself, Google always strike out every Internet or media sector that fit to its corporate strategy and linked to its main activity: collect information. [...]

[...] Those three possibilities are interesting for Google and totally adaptable. Each of them is reliable and represents a potential source of profits but also of risks. Many rumours had turned around a potential acquisition of eBay by Google, or one of its competitors. In order to complete its offer with Froogle, a rapprochement between Google and eBay could be considered. This could allow Google kill two birds with one stone by acquiring an e-commerce portal and a payment solution with Paypal, subsidiary of eBay. [...]

[...] On my opinion, Google's main weakness is its lack of innovation of its web engine. Google became an institution thanks to its search engine, but this website failed in originality and design. Apple has its own ‘touch' and Google also. Its website is unoriginal but simple, user-friendly and easy to use. Its weakness is originality, but its interface is clear and, on another side, this could be also an advantage. In other words, Google has few or no weaknesses because it distinguishes itself from its competitors with unexpected rules, conceptual values, and original governance. [...]