Google is a company that started six years ago when its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new way to do online searching in a Stanford University dorm room. This new idea then spread quickly to many people around the globe seeking information. Googles’ technologies have been able to sort through a large amount of growing information on the web and deliver it to its users for free, a service which returns accurate information in a very short amount of time. They rely on the millions of people who post websites to figure out which other sites have good content. Google uses a technique called PageRank to rank every page. It figures out all of the sites linking to a web page and gives them a value, based in part on the sites which are linked to them. Then Google is able to determine the sites with the most votes meaning they have the best amount of information to those most interested in the information offered. PageRank keeps on improving as the web becomes bigger, since each new website is another set of information which leans to another vote. It is the top search engine in the world, representing eighty percent of all European search page views and forty one percent of all US search page views. Its net income has been increasing, $6,985,000 in 2001, $99,656,000 in 2002, $105,648,000 in 2003, and $399,199,000 in 2004. This company must have done a great job in order to be so successful. When it was first started their web index contained about thirty million documents, and now they index more than eight billion web pages which translates to two hundred and fifty times as much information.However Google isn’t just a popular search engine it also does many other things that come in hand to many people around the world. Some of Googles’ services include Alerts where you receive news and search results by e mail, Blog Search which finds blogs on people’s favorite topics, Book Search to find text of any books, Images where you can find images on the web, Maps where you find maps and directions, and News where you can find many news stories. Some of Google’s tools include Blogger where you can express yourself online, Earth where you can explore the world from your PC, Translate where you can view web pages in other languages, and Talk where you can IM and call friends from your PC. Google is global, besides its main Google.com it includes one hundred and two other international domains such as Google.de, Googdle.fr, and Google.co.uk. One hundred different languages are available.
Who are their competitors?
* Yahoo
Yahoo and Google are battling over the same Web visitors and advertising dollars. There currently is an $8 billion global search advertising business, which is expected to rise to $22 billion in five years, according to Piper Jaffray.
* Microsoft
Microsoft is also competing with Google because Google is now a major threat to their dominance. While Google was launching all of its products for free, Microsoft was trying to catch up in search doing a project which they spent $150 million on but Google and Yahoo keep on getting ahead with new innovations such as complete maps and satellite photos. Bill Gates wishes he could have combined software innovation with a brand new Internet business model like Google did.
How have they used information technology to their advantage?
In coordination with several of the major corporations, including Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson, Google provided financial support in the launch of the .mobi top level domain created specifically for the mobile internet, stating that it is supporting the new domain extension to help set the standards that will define the future of mobile content and improve the experience of Google users. In early 2006, Google launched Google.mobi, a mobile search portal offering several Google mobile products, including stripped-down versions of its applications and services for mobile users. On September 17, 2007, Google launched, "Adsense for Mobile", a service to its publishing partners providing the ability to monetize their mobile websites through the targeted placement of mobile text ads.Also in September, Google acquired the mobile social networking site, Zingku.mobi to "provide people worldwide with direct access to Google applications, and ultimately the information they want and need, right from their mobile devices."
How competitive are they in the market?
Since 2001, Google has acquired several small start-up companies, often consisting of innovative teams and products. One of the earlier companies that Google bought was Pyra Labs. They were the creators of Blogger, a weblog publishing platform, first launched in 1999. This acquisition led to many premium features becoming free. Pyra Labs was originally formed by Evan Williams, yet he left Google in 2004. In early 2006, Google acquired Upstartle, a company responsible for the online collaborative word processor, Writely. The technology in this product was combined with Google Spreadsheets to become Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
What new services do they offer?
Desktop products
Standalone applications
• AdWords Editor (Mac OS X, Windows 2000 SP3 /XP/Vista)
Desktop application to manage a Google AdWords account. The application allows users to make changes to their account and advertising campaigns before synchronising with the online service.
• Gmail/Google Notifier (Mac OS X, Windows 2000/XP)
Alerts the user of new messages in their Gmail account.
• Photos Screensaver
Slideshow screensaver as part of Google Pack, which displays images sourced from a hard disk, or through RSS and Atom Web feeds.
• Picasa (Mac OS X, Linux and Windows 2000/XP/Vista)
• Picasa Web Albums Uploader (Mac OS X)
An application to help uploading images to the "Picasa Web Albums" service. It consists of both an iPhoto plug-in and a stand-alone application.
Desktop extensions
These products created by Google are extensions to software created by other organizations.
• Blogger Web Comments (Firefox only)
Displays related comments from other Blogger users.
• Dashboard Widgets for Mac (Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets)
Collection of mini-applications including Gmail, Blogger and Search History.
• Send to Mobile (Firefox) (Discontinued)
Allows users to send text messages to their mobile phone (US only) about web content.
Mobile products
Online mobile products
These products can be accessed through a browser on a mobile device or a standard desktop web browser such as Firefox.
• Blogger Mobile
Only available on some US networks. Allows you to post to your Blogger blog from a mobile device.
• Calendar
Read a list of all Google Calendar events from a mobile device. There is also the option to quickly add events to your personal calendar.
• Gmail
Access a Gmail account from a mobile device using a standard mobile web browser. Alternatively, Google provides a specific mobile application to access and download Gmail messages quicker.
• News
Access Google News on a mobile device using a simpler interface compared to the full online application.
• Google Mobilizer
Makes any web page mobile-friendly.
• iGoogle
Simple version of iGoogle - you must visit the information page to choose which modules to display on your personal mobile version as not all modules are compatible.
Downloadable mobile products
Some of these products must be downloaded and run from a mobile device.
• Gmail
A downloadable application that has many advantages over accessing Gmail through a web [interface] on a mobile such as the ability to interact with Gmail features including labels and archiving. Requires a properly configured Java Virtual Machine, which is not available by default on some platforms (such as Palm's Treo).
• Maps (Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Symbian,Palm OS, and J2ME)
A mobile application for viewing maps on a mobile device. The application lets you find addresses and plot directions. Teamed with a GPS the application can use your geolocation and show your current location on the map. The device must have either a specific application to use Google maps or any phone with a properly configured Java Virtual Machine.
Web products
Account management
• Dashboard
Dashboard is an online tool that allows Google Account holders to view all their personal information Google is storing on their servers.
Advertising
• Ad Planner
An online tool that allows users to view traffic estimates for popular web sites and create media plans.
• Ad Manager
A hosted ad management solution
• AdSense
Advertisement program for Website owners. Adverts generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis, and adverts shown are from AdWords users, depending on which adverts are relevant.
• AdWords
Google's flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.
Communication and publishing
• 3D Warehouse
Google 3D Warehouse is an online service that hosts 3D models of existing objects, locations (including buildings) and vehicles created in Google SketchUp by the aforementioned application's users. The models can be downloaded into Google SketchUp by other users or Google Earth.
• Apps
Custom domain and service integration service for businesses, enterprise and education, featuring Gmail and other Google products.
• Blogger
Weblog publishing tool. Users can create a custom, hosted blogs with features such as photo publishing, comments, group blogs, blogger profiles and mobile-based posting with little technical knowledge.
• Calendar
Free online calendar. It includes a unique "quick add" function which allows users to insert events using natural language input. Other features include Gmail integration and calendar sharing. It is similar to those offered by Yahoo! and MSN.
Mapping
• City Tours
An overlay to Maps that shows interesting tours within a city
• Maps
Mapping service that indexes streets and displays satellite and street-level imagery, providing driving directions and local business search.
• Map Maker
Edit the map in more than a hundred countries and watch your edits go into Google Maps. Become a citizen cartographer and help map your world.
What makes them so unique?
• Better and quicker search results
• Advanced search features, including searching for PDF, .doc and .ppt files, and displaying them as HTML
• Easy and powerful search administration
• Easy integration into web sites
• google is free to use, has a custom search engine, puts the search results according to the most popular to least popular.
• google has options for image search, article search or even search for any government document.
• It searches according to the terms you type and also searches for other terms with same meaning.
• It is fast, realiable, it has its own dictionary, calculater, and spell check.
How competitive are they in the international market?
Google has worked with several corporations, in order to improve production and services. On September 28, 2005,Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA and Google are planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers. In October 2006, Google formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org.
Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL. As part of the collaboration, Google plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium-video service within Google Video. This did not allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase.
Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL. As part of the collaboration, Google plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium-video service within Google Video. This did not allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_produ
https://adwords.google.com/select/
https://www.google.com/adsense/
www.google.com enterprise/gsa/index
http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~paturi/cse91/Presents/mbotella.pdf
