Top Business Strategy Lessons and Policy of Google Inc.

Business Strategy
Name:
Instructor:
Institution:
Date:
Google Inc., the mammoth corporation that is running the show when it comes to online search, traces its origins to very humble beginnings. As recent as the year 1995, the company wasn’t in existence at all, and the generation at this time didn’t even know what Google was. The book In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy offers as insight of everything concerning the company, from the time it started out, the ideas behind its beginning, and the strategy it has employed over the years to ensure that it remains competitive and continues to produce better products .This paper will delve into the analysis of the book, providing the important points it gives throughout its content. This is essentially the aim of part 1 of this paper; the second part of this paper will focus on a reflection on the book.
Part 1
Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google has continued to be the dominant name in the online world. Virtually all the processes of searching anything online must go through google. It has been so dominant a company that its name is now a common verb when conducting online searches. The company’s business approach has been quite unconventional. It’s very different to what most other corporations do. Employees are encouraged to manage themselves; there are no strict rules to follow, nor any management bureaucracy to follow in terms of duty performance in the workplace. As a result, employees are given the freedom to work under their own creativity and independence. This ensures that the employees maintain the enthusiasm and zeal to continue giving their best in terms of service delivery, hence consistency in productivity. This has been in stark contrast to most companies, whose operations heavily hinge on numerous board meetings and constant management directives(Bloomberg,2014).
Google’s initial strategy was to operate with its main business, which encompassed search through YouTube and Google Search, and advertisements through Ad Words. However, the recent development of Alphabet signaled a strategic shift in Google’s business approach(Dougherty,2015). This new development has shown that Google can be ambidextrous in its enterprise, as evident from its ability to embrace new ideas while at the same time fully exploiting the one that it has at present. Such ability is not only valuable, but also tough for any corporation.
Google basically has a knack of coming up ,or buying out innovative ideas and products and then devoting some of its resources towards the polishing and launch of these ideas, but then shooting itself in the foot by notoriously not trying it best to make these products and services a success. In some instances, the company even opts to ignore such facets altogether. For example, the company took up the Android market and successfully outmuscled Apple .Its attempts however, to sale Android phones directly to clients, without the presence of any binding agreement with companies such as Verizon, backfired spectacularly.
In other instances such as Ad Words and Ad Sense, Google managed to buyout already running ideas and in the process acquired very lucrative enterprises. This in turn raises the worry that the company’s innovative ideas don’t come from within but from outside the Googleplex. The best evidence of this is from the examples of its current profitable products, such as YouTube, Google Docs, pieces of Google Maps, and Google Voice. Google’s laxity is best exemplified in its failure to follow up on Orkut, a social networking site that came earlier than Facebook(Dougherty,2015). At the time of its layout, Orkut spread out so quickly among people and garnered much popularity especially in Brazil and India. However, Google even lost interest in providing the much needed support and infrastructure needed to make it grow even faster. Facebook eventually came up and surpassed it.
From the very start, Google has employed an unusual approach to its business, very often has it chosen to do things in a different manner to the way it is expected. The company’s founders wanted it to be different in every way possible. They didn’t focus on conventional wisdom. This is evident from the company’s slogan, ‘Don’t be Evil,’ which combines two negative words. Conventionally, it would sound awkward for a company slogan to have two negative words. It s this resolution to be different that has set the company apart from other companies and its competitors as well. When it comes to the recruitment procedure, the company places emphasis individuals with doctorate degrees as well as those with high scores in SAT .The Company also provides good working environment for its employees, including the perks and the cafeterias that have nice food(Bloomberg,2014).
The company’s continuous aggressive pursuit for technological innovations and breakthroughs is one of its trademarks. With its team of brilliant scientists and programmers, the company s well equipped to come up with any ambitious idea it places its eyes upon. It is however the same kind of ambition that also undoes its progress. The ‘Don’t Be Evil’ slogan eventually catches up with the company’s own operations and practices, especially when t comes to the development of new products. These products are later to be very controversial for the company itself since it raises much dust .One example is the Street View option on Google Maps.
...