Question

GOOGLE

Google please answer all the questions

Sections 1 and 2. 1. Why study Google?

2. Visit https://abc.xyz and read Larry Page’s description of Google’s strategy.

What other businesses is Google investing in? Why do they do it? Does it make sense?

3. Has Google always been successful?

What Google’s products have failed and why? Even though so many Google’s products have failed, why do they still continue investing in such ideas?

4. How does organic/natural web search work?

5. Describe the hardware infrastructure of Google.

Sections 3, 4, 5, and 6. 1. Is online advertising a disruptive innovation?

2. Explain a business model behind AdWords.

3. What challenges does Google face with respect to mobile advertising? How can it address them?

4. Explain a business model behind AdSense. What is the content adjacency problem?

5. Does Google benefit from the Network Effect?

6. If you do an analysis of the AdSense-based online advertising industry, which of the 5 Porter’s forces is the strongest? (you don’t have to the entire analysis, just identify the single strongest force)

Sections 7 and 8. 1. Customer profiling and behavioral targeting. a. Describe technologies for customer profiling and behavioral targeting. b. What are their limitations? c. What about privacy threats and user resistance?

Section 9. 1. How can criminals abuse the Google’s advertising business model? 2. How can Google combat them?

Answer 1

1. Google is today's one of the most influential company in the world. It has changed the way people live, study, search and exist on the internet. It has its footprint on almost every part of the internet. Its biggest revenue earner is google, so much so that it has become a verb on its own like when someone has to search something on the web, one always says "Google it". It is worth billions and always is named as one of the biggest tech company in the world. It also owns YouTube which is the second most popular search engine only after its parent company, Google which controls around 92% of all searches on the web.

2. Google, from the beginning, invests in new products. It launched its mail service on 1st April and everyone thought it was a joke. They invest in new crazy ideas that sometimes fail but sometimes gives a lot to society and itself. They are investing in Waymo which is a self-driving technology development company. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet inc. and is a leading company in self-driving technology. They also invest in a lot of startups around the world. They are also working on drone delivery which would revolutionize the e-commerce market.

As a technology company, they need to invest in these ideas because the technology industry is fuelled by these revolutions. " you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant".

Do these make sense? We can only see but like waymo, many companies are betting on self-driving cars, some of them are Uber, Tesla, Apple also seems to be working on it. Driving is an unskilled work and if computers drive all our cars, Road accidents will decrease and traffic will move way efficiently. Drone delivery too can be very helpful to the e-commerce platforms is laying off more workers and improve efficiency.

3. Google has failed numerous times before. Its messaging app Allo, Its social media platform Google+, Google Glass, Google wave, Google answers, etc. Some of the products mentioned are too late like Google+ and Allo, some are early for their time like Google Glass. Some had a lack of vision and focus. but every time google has learned a lesson and they thrive to improve. Google has not always been successful but they keep innovating on new technologies because many of their ventures started like they were going to fail like Maps. After all, how will they earn from it or how will they manage to operate it?

4. Organic search results are web page listings that match the most with the user's search query. It is also called "natural" search result and this is what SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is all about. They have a patented technology which ranks pages on the web, based on various factors like time it takes to load the page and how user friendly the website it and many other. This is the reason Google is the top search engine and no other search engine comes near it.

5. Google operates a lot of Datacenters around the world. Their current capacity is not public but an estimate says that they had 2.6 million servers in 2016. Their specifications are also unknown but they are custom servers. Theirs severs make YouTube, Google search, Google Maps possible, They are also in the business of renting servers called google cloud and host websites of companies like Spotify, HSBC, Snapchat, Ubisoft among many others.

Is online advertising a disruptive innovation?

Yes, the online advertisement was a disruptive innovation and whole marketing landscape changes by it. Now only people who would be interested in something can see the ads related to it, which reduces the marketing expenses and made marketing viable for even small businesses.

2. Adwords is an online advertising service that lets companies show an advertisement to users based on their cookies and keywords. Adwords charges from their clients only when a user clicks on the ad link and furthermore if he stays for longer than a certain period and even more when a purchase is made. Before AdWords, the online advertisement was like offline advertisement and everyone would see the same ad regardless of their interest like an ad banner on a highway.

3. Some economists say that google does benefit from the network effect. Though one may simply type another URL like bing and yahoo, but Google has what's called "The experience effect". The experience it provides in all its services makes it hard for users and hence, advertisers difficult to switch. It's difficult for users because they provide the best search result from that patented technology mentioned above. In other services like its mail service, its difficult to switch because of practical reasons as someone who is using it for a year or two will have his important mail there. And this is why businesses and users find themselves trapped behind these virtual walls.

(I could only do that many questions because of time constraint, Hope you understand. Good luck.)