IndexThe History of GoogleThe Reasons for SuccessEarly Recognition and EfficiencyThe Business ModelContinuous InnovationChanges and the FutureGoogle is one of the largest, most successful and well-known media companies in the world, with more than 60,000 employees in more than 50 countries, owning and providing services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Chrome, Android, of course Google Search and many others. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Story of Google "The story of Google begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Larry Page was considering Stanford for graduate school, and Sergey Brin, a student there, was assigned to show him around. how it's written on the Google web page. In 1995 Sergey Brin was already studying at Stanford University and Larry Page thought of studying there. In 1996 they started working on a search engine project called BackPub. The name BackPub comes from the procedure by which the software works , because it ranks web pages based on the number of backlinks they have. Larry and Sergey launched the software in March 1996 from Larry's home page at Stanford to be able to use and sort the data collected by BackPub, they developed a page ranking algorithm While analyzing the results of BackPub, which consisted of ranked backlinks, Larry and Sergey noticed that their software, based on page ranking, produced better and more useful results than existing techniques. This search engine continued to run on Stanford's servers for a year. After this period, Google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. Google's name comes from a mathematical term googol. It's a number. 1 followed by 100 zeros. “This is said to reflect the founders' mission to organize the infinite amount of information on the Internet.” In August 1998, a check for $100,000 was written by Andy Bechtolsheim for the still non-existent company. The founders opened a bank account and continued working with Bechtolsheim's investment. On September 4, 1998, Google was incorporated as a private company. Their first famous office was a garage in Menlo Park, California. After a year, in 1999, the company moved from the garage to the new office at 165 University Avenue, Palo Alto. They needed to move because in 1999 they already had 8 employees and of course their famous team member Yoshka, the dog. Subsequently, Google received an offer of $25 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield, Byers and Sequoia Capital, because they saw the company's potential. After a year, Google was already Yahoo's search engine. Google's results surprised all rivals. At the time, the company's only revenue came from licensing its technology, which was focused exclusively on algorithmic search. Over the next two years, Google continued to grow. They hired engineers, scientists, sales and marketing people and moved to their new headquarters in Mountain View, California, which is a huge campus called the Googleplex. On the other hand, over the years Page and Brin have made many attempts to sell the company to Yahoo, Excite and several other Silicon Valley companies for a price of $1 million. As Brian O'Connell wrote, fortunately for both founders, all employees and investors none of the attempts came to fruition and Google maintained its grip on the search engine market. Google went public in 2004 and has become one of the largest media companies. It launched Google News in 2002, Gmail in 2004, Google Maps in 2005, Google Chrome in 2008, Google+ in 2011, and many more. The reasons for success Howmentioned above, Google has become one of the largest, best known and most successful media companies in the world, but how did it do it, what were or are the success factors? “Perhaps there is no greater proof of Google's success than the fact that it has become a verb.” In my opinion there are 4 main sources of success, these are: Early recognition and efficiency The business model Continuous innovation Governance structure and corporate culture. Early recognition and efficiency With the expansion of the Internet, the need has emerged for a tool, a real search engine, that collects and sorts information on the web has also grown. Prototypes and existing search engines used keyword frequency as the basis for their rankings, which led to irrelevant listings and frustration among users. Using this software, he needed to read an average of 10 results to get to what he was looking for. This problem was solved in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their original business was sorting and growing information with algorithms. Additionally, their software assigned scores to the results, given based on specific criteria. So instead of employing human capital to review the results, they developed a page ranking system. This system preferred pages that were linked together. The more references there were, the more important the specified page was. These criteria helped determine where the found page might appear among search engine results. It was quickly discovered that using this idea instead of word counting can provide better results than existing software on the market. Of course, Google's search engine has undergone and continues to undergo updates to provide users with more appropriate results. “Because it started off great and just kept getting better and better.” The Business Model As Mohit Tater describes in his article on Google's business model, the important element of Google's business model that differentiates Google is the fact that it uses a multi-sided business model. This means that although Google provides a free search engine for regular users, it collects countless data about almost all of it that could be used for commercial purposes. Google also needs to generate revenue, just like other businesses. That's why it focuses on advertising. On the contrary, advertising is not the only source of revenue. Google attracts visitors and at the same time sells advertising space. The business model works like this: Google analyzes the user's online behavior and uses this information. From this data Google builds its value proposition. According to Mohit Tater, there are 3 value propositions from which the business model is built. There are different value propositions for different users, they actually follow the same philosophy, which is to provide targeted advertising. Value Proposition Number 1. The first group targeted are webmasters or people who have a website. Google aims to help them earn money from their content. Blogger.com is also powered by Google. This is a free platform for those who do not want to have their own separate website, but want to reach potential customers and be reached by others. Another software for this purpose is called AdSense. AdSense also helps content creators earn money. The working mechanism of AdSense is as follows: it allows publishers to place Google ads on their website, so they can generate money from this. By using this software, the content creator becomes a Google partner and receives a percentage of the revenue generated by his website. This partnership is beneficial to both Google andfor the individual, because Google can show ads on other pages not only by itself and the individual attracts attention. Value proposition number 2. The second service is for advertisers. They are individuals with their own business, the need to be reached by customers faster and the willingness to pay for it. Google has the largest network for online advertising and has managed to conquer the advertising market, unlike Bing or Yahoo. Responsible for this result is the so-called AdWords software. Advertisers of any size, so start-ups, small businesses and even large corporations can promote their service using Google Ads. Advertisers have the opportunity to customize their online advertising campaign according to their pricing and performance plan . They can set keywords, who and where they want to advertise. Google AdWords targeting service helps match supply and demand. Ensures that only results relevant to your ads are displayed. Thanks to the multi-sided platform, Google has an important source of revenue. This source is advertising. The more ads you see, the more Google earns from advertisers. But advertisers can't just easily buy ad space from Google, they have to go through a differentiation process set by AdWords. This approach places the company in a supreme position. “AdWords looks at the popularity of your keywords and the narrowness of your target audience, then offers a bid price per ad impression, cost per install, and cost per click.” Naturally, with a higher search volume and greater popularity comes a higher price, which must be paid for the service. In conclusion, Google's revenue from AdWords allows the company to provide free software, which is value proposition number 3, such as the Gmail search engine, and AdSense, the program that encourages authors to use Google's service , so that it can be successful in online business and, of course, allows you to continuously improve all Google products and services. Continuous innovationImproving and updating is essential nowadays in the life of a company. It usually means keeping up with trends. This is not entirely the case with Google. Although they are refining the processes, adding new designs and options, they always pay particular attention to innovation. As I have experienced, while using and researching Google products, innovation plays an important role in the life of the company. Google highlights its importance and encourages employees to be creative. The result of this behavior can be easily noticed: technology we can wear, driverless cars, mobile operating system, drone delivery system and much more. Since money is no longer the main driver of the company, due to advertising revenue, it can focus on creating new things. A usual process at Google involves creating a beta version of a program or project, releasing it, and constantly gathering information and learning from data and customer feedback. First, they invest heavily in research. Billions of dollars are spent on research and development every year. Google usually invites scientists and university professors to its headquarters to give presentations or to work with the amount of data that Google collects. Google also invites small and young businesses and start-ups to use the data and collaborate with Google members to help them develop or refine their ideas. Companies like these include Slack, Nest, 23andMe, and Walker and Company. On the other hand, Google doesn't just help these companies, butlearn from them. Secondly, this attitude to innovation is present at all levels and is strengthened for everyone. The best example of this behavior at Google is the so-called 20% rule, according to which employees should dedicate 20% of their working time to ideas and projects that they find interesting. (The rule will be explained in more detail later) This approach and this particular rule led to the existence of Google News, Gmail and AdSense. The attitude is as follows: as long as there is a chance to benefit from the idea or create something new, the company will try. This mentality of Google is supported by its famous governance structure and corporate culture, which are in my opinion the fourth and substantial part of success. First of all, let me introduce both the governance structure and corporate culture of Google and then let's go into detailed details on how they play an important role in Goggle's success. The following part about Google's governance structure refers to the ideas of Scott Thomson. Google has no unusual corporate structure other than some unique leadership positions like Chief Culture Officer and Chief Internet Evangelist. A board of directors oversees the company and instructs the executive management team. The leadership team is responsible for departments such as engineering, product, legal, finance, and sales, but these departments are also divided into smaller departments. Originally a company structure is built like this: there are the usual employees at the bottom, supervisors supervise them, to whom the middle management and above all the top management report. This is called the vertical approach, where decisions are made at the top and executed at the bottom, as Heather Skyler describes. On the other hand, Google has a cross-functional organizational structure. It is basically a matrix structure with some degree of flattening. This flatness is a notable feature of the structure, which supports growth and competitiveness. There are 3 main features of Google's business structure: Function for grouping Product for grouping Flatness. Function as a basis for grouping is used in the structure. This means there are sales, engineering, product management, and many other groups. The company also uses product-based grouping. This means that some employees are responsible for the development of a particular mobile phone. And the third feature of the structure is flatness. The flatness of an organizational structure allows employees, teams, or groups to obtain and share information across hierarchical levels. Thanks to the flatness they can communicate directly with upper management. This feature helps create a more comfortable and smaller company atmosphere because employees participate in the decision-making process. This leads to the feeling and emphasizes the importance of being equally important to the success of the company. Good, smart ideas play a more crucial role than headlines. Google's governance structure supports its corporate culture in achieving continuous innovation, which as already discussed is one of the key drivers of Google's success. The joint work of corporate structure and corporate culture helps to develop competitive advantages over other media giants such as Apple, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. This is why Google is a good example of alignment to achieve growth and success. Google does not have a traditional organizational culture. This is partly due to alignment with the governance structure, but many other factors also play an important role. The cultureGoogle's corporate structure has 6 main characteristics: Open Innovative Unique in hiring Celebrates failures Provides employees with a fun work environment Has its core values and mission. Google is open to new and creative ideas. Employees know this, which is why they feel free to share their opinions and ideas. The matrix organizational structure helps to continue sharing information, to improve and make ideas become reality. In this way the company also tries to motivate employees to test themselves and try to reflect in the usual way. Of course, they receive support in achieving these tasks. Google offers comfortable and welcoming working conditions, like in a small business, which make it easier to stay open and share ideas, including with Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I already mentioned the 20% rule on Google. This is how the company encourages creativity and innovation, which is a key term in Google's culture and business success. The broadest definition of the 20% rule is the so-called 70/20/10 rule. The working mechanism is as follows: employees should dedicate 70% of their working time to the project they are currently working on. 20% should be spent on collecting ideas, creating new projects that are in connection with the main one. And in the remaining 10% they can tackle whatever other new ideas they have. This kind of freedom is one of the key forces behind new products. Google receives about 3 million job applications a year, but only hires about 7 thousand of them, according to data from July 2015. So, there must be something in Google's hiring process that makes it possible to filter this huge amount of applications and find candidates who are a great fit for Google's creative and innovative team. Of course they ask some questions to evaluate the candidate, but rather they look for candidates who are intellectual, fun, confident and ready to face and experience the unknown. Acceptance of failure also plays a crucial role in Google. The attitude towards failures is as follows: if you fail, but share the failed project and experience with others, you actually make it easier for others not to fail. So, you essentially save resources and time for the company. Committing failures is an everyday phenomenon, especially in companies like Google that deal with innovation and the unknown. This attitude motivates employees to dream big. In addition to this attitude towards failures, the media giant pays close attention to how it treats employees. It provides a countless amount of fringe benefits and a fun work environment. Employees can receive unlimited food and snacks, massage, healthcare, fitness center and gym membership, there are volleyball and basketball courts, bowling alleys and so on. Additionally, Googlers can also bring their dogs to work. “Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” says Google's mission statement. The core values upheld by the company and its employees are truly important. Core values provide guidelines for how to behave towards one another and how to set expectations. Don't be evil is Google's unofficial motto. Although an approach like this is not the correct one for a big company like Google, but already knowing Google's corporate culture I believe that employees can feel the difference between working in Google or working in Google. elsewhere. In conclusion, it is interesting to work for Google because employees can feel important, and equally important at that. Happy employees work better and.”
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