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Benjamin Dalusma bad73, AEM2200 Google Assignment 2 09/21/2011 Google build its entire success with innovations and creativity and revolutionizing the Internet world in the early 2000’s. However, lately the company has been facing major organizational issues due to the fact that they are too “idealistic” and their vision and management structure seem to not be compatible. In order to remedy these issues, Google must make decisions to improve the situation they’re facing.
One of the biggest problems Google faces is that people believe that they give an absolute importance to data and that they do not focus on offering tangible products to their customers. A possible alternative for them would be to adopt an “Apple-like” marketing plan and offer touchable and concrete products just like Apple who since the beginning of the 2000’s has sold computers, MP3 players and phones. Google is perfectly capable of doing so.
With more then 10,000 engineers employed by their company, and a well-known name in the computer-science industry, Google has the facilities and the resources to perform well in this type of business. However entering this business might be risky considering that there are a lot of well-established competitors in the market (Microsoft, Apple for example). This alternative would also depart the company from its original culture and values: Internet products.
It is clear today that Google has failed in the social networking, the e-book market and in other products such as Google Buzz. Google has also been very reactive to market trends lately and has not really been innovating like they did in their beginnings. A second alternative would be to focus on the “next big thing”. They actually seem to have the next big thing: “Cloud Computing” which is a service that is growing at a very fast rate. Google, with its Google Doc and Picasa, is the leader of this very new service and potential business.
Cloud Computing should not be the only product they should be focusing on; they should be working and focusing on innovations like they always have in the past. A third alternative for the company would be to improve their operation management section by bringing in a new experimented CEO. The arrival of Schmidt in the early 2000’s revitalized and organized the company and made it evolve from a regular start-up company to a multinational corporation.
There is a relative chaos in the organization structure resulting that the vision of the company and its management are not synchronous. Bringing someone new to the head of the company can change that. Finally another simple alternative would be simply to continue doing what they do and make no changes and no adjustments to their situation. Google has made over twenty-eight billion dollars in 2010 in revenue with a net profit of over eight billion dollar; maybe there are no real problems and hopefully Google will always be successful financially.
Before choosing one of these alternatives, Google must consider some factors such as culture, financial profits, availability to the public and customer’s satisfaction. They must also choose the alternative that will unify the company’s vision to its structure and allow them to be creative and innovative rather then reactive like they have been these past couple of years. Google’s best bet would be to focus their resources in cloud computing and other innovations while still according great importance to the possibility of entering the tangible technological objects market.
Google Doc, Picasa, Google Chrome OS are examples of innovations and cloud computing applications Google has already started and that they should continue to develop. Furthermore, the acquisition of Motorola by Google gives them the option to tackle Apple and the IPhone. It also gives them the opportunity to incorporate that cloud computing technology in phones, which would be a major innovation. The success of a product such as the Google phone can potentially generate money.