SWOT analysis of google (Research Paper Sample)

SWOT analysis: A case Study on Google Inc. 2010
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Introduction
The continuous advancement in technology has made it easy for humans to access to information, communicate, and locate things in a timely manner. Here, one needs to just type the key words of the information being searched and click the ‘search’ button on search engines. The commonly used search engines are Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon, and Bing (Adam, 2008). Google Inc. was founded in 1998 by two PhD students; Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Though founded in 1998, the two friends had decided to register the company as Google Incorporated after 10 years of service. As studies postulate, Google is one of the most powerful search engines, and the most visited website in the world (Adam, 2008).
The website attracts approximately 61.9% of all internet searches. Currently, Google offers a variety of products, which include but not limited to Chrome, Earth, Gmail, iGoogle, Google Maps, Google Gadgets, Google Mobilizer, Google calender and Stetch up (Kumar, 2011). Financial analysis of Google Inc. reveals that the company’s revenue, income and equity had been increasing over the past years. This implies that the company is capable of doing better than the past despite the many challenges it faces. The paper critically presents SWOT analysis applicable to Google strategy 2010.
SWOT Analysis
The section details the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for Google Inc (Fine, 2009). A SWOT analysis tool will help Google Inc. make influential strategic decisions, which may make it attain a stable and sustainable long-term growth.
Strengths
One of the key strengths of Google is the ability to attract and reach huge markets. The company is highly innovative and entrepreneurial with unique marketing strategies. Through its culture of creativity, the company continues to offer to the market highly innovative products such as directory and images. In addition, Google has a varied customer base, which ranges from young to old people. Ideally, anyone using the internet is a potential market for the company. Moreover, the company is not biased towards advertisers, and it separates advertisement from actual results.
Google search engine uses a highly sophisticated technology. A perfect example is the art search technology. The company has a perfect search engine, which is capable of displaying the exact content of the search within seconds. Its software conducts a series of instantaneous calculated fast than traditional search engines. The used technology offers localized search known as ‘search by location’, which displays information on vendors of the products and services. Also, the technology uses a simple interface, which provides comprehensive and non confusing results. The company has hired hard working PhDs who, continuously, enhance the search algorithms making the engine faster, relevant and efficient. To enhance its search ability for users in different countries, the engine consists of 88 languages.
The company has a profile of highly qualified and competent men and women. Its staff has excellent academic qualifications, achievements and experiences in the field of Information Technology (IT) and knowledge management. Actually, most of its top executives have a minimum of a MBA in various disciplines applicable to Google. To enhance their level of competence, the company’s staff are enriched their networks by being members of highly reputable councils and associations.
The company has strong revenue and capital base streams. Over the last 10 years, the company has accumulated a total capital of £105 billion. It is estimated that Google earns approximately 30% revenue per advertisement impression more than Yahoo. The increasing revenue is attributed to low operation cost, especially using low cost UNIX. This makes it have a competitive advantage over its competitors.
Weaknesses
The issue of over application is a key challenge to the organization. Per year, on average, the company review over 0.5 million job applicants. This implies that top corporate executives need to stretch their efforts in order shortlist, select and choose the best applicants to occupy various positions on offer. Another weakness of the company is the failure of the top executives to properly support, motivate and retain subordinate staff. Studies show that employee retention is a key strategy towards achieving a steady organizational growth. Also, some of Google’s staff feels underutilized, which makes them to leave the organization. This is evidenced from the development of an algorithm, which aids managers to indentify and converse those users likely to depart from the website. Ideally, the top executives of Google have failed to adopt proper mechanisms relevant in addressing employee’s grievances. It this problem is not addressed, there is a high risk of employees revealing the company’s trade secrets to its arch rivals like Yahoo and Amazon. The departure of these high-profile personalities, also, costs the company in terms of both money and time.
A recent study reveals that Google hires excessive number of contractors, some of which does nothing significant to the company. This has substantially wasted the company’s resources. The reputation (public image) of the company had been destroyed by its action of incorporating a lot of pornography in the data bases of its search engine. Again, Google has a confusing charging and ranking policy regarding the Cost Per Click advertisement. This makes it difficult for marketers to foretell where to position their ads and determine to cost of each ad. The company’s technology is weak to the extent of easily manipulated by spammers, who often create dummy sites. Due to automated indexing, the company’s localized search algorithms, sometimes, displays erroneous results.
Opportunities
In general, there are many business opportunities in the external environment for the company to exploit. Thus, the company has an ability to grasp and implement the new opportunities and be head of its competitors in the industry. Also, by launching the new operating system, which is an upgrade of Google Chrome, the company has a vast to expand and affirm itself in the market. If the company, successfully, launch the new operating system, it will pose a challenge to Microsoft Corporation, which has enjoyed the monopoly power over the last 20 decades (Kumar, 2011).
With the increasing demand for online books, (e-books) the company has an opportunity to enter into agreements with companies such as On Demand Books, and benefit from every book downloaded and printed via Google’s search engine. With the existing level of technology employed by Google, it is possible for the company to develop an easy expert search and integrate it using open-url. A critical review of the company, also, indicates that it has a capacity to offer more services to hand-held devices and increase its market share, become a mass market portal, and lock-in-users by increasing their switching costs (Adam, 2008). Finally, on Google’s localized search, the company can place localized vendor (paid) advertisements, and overall internet ads.
Threats
Google Inc. is subject to a number of threats like Yahoo, Bing etc., which may adversely affect its operations. For example, Google in some measure relies on portals like AOL (Kumar, 2011). If those contracts are terminated, the company’s revenue will adversely be affected. Another threat results from the nature of the industry. Generally, there are no restrictions to entry of new players into the market. Thus, it’s a huge threat that, in the future, new entrant with the same or better interface may enter the industry. This will dilute the company’s market share and revenue.
As earlier noted, Google’s Cost Per Click ranking and Charging policies are somehow confusing. If this problem is not resolved quickly, there is a possibility of the company losing most of its users. Also, there is a strong completion from the company key rivals. For example, a portal such as Yahoo provides extr...