Introduction
Internet is the technology of a new era, where it opens the way between people and information by improving knowledge. Today’s world is more dependent on information with preferences, liberty, and control of people. Google as a search engine and news provider has connected those people with recent stories and data with different languages and different forms of files. Google search engine has all the web information with index and people can easily find favorable information by simple web search without human involvement. This information has been placed inaccessible sources to benefit people worldwide.
So, it is clear that Google is a technology-based organization with great success in the marketplace. It provides available information with entertainment and communications between people. It has started its business as a search engine, now it is successful in a market with news, community services, mail services, content providers, etc. So, Google put itself to rank with other websites in the marketplace.
R&D budgets for Google and for its competitors
There are some major competitors of Google in the market, where the R&D budget sectors must be different from one another. For any IT-based communicating service business, the budgets for R&D are mainly prepared and saved for improving hardware and software technologies. The difference between Google with two other major competitors, MSN (Microsoft) and Yahoo is given based on expert’s viewpoint:
Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. have integrated operating systems with customers’ experience, where Google has to increase its engineering resources and experiences to compete with them in the market. In the 2007 fiscal year, Google is more concerned about the selection of people in the R&D sector, to develop existing products, and also to introduce new products in the market. The expenses in the R&D sector were $1,228,589,000, where for more development, it increases next year $2,119,985,000, which focuses on that, Google is now more careful in the development of technologies of a search engine, networking, news provides, and other services. After investing more in R&D sectors, the sales marketing activities are also increased onwards. This cost is only 13.1% of the total revenue, which really brings great success to the company. When the cost is rising, the total responsibilities of it is personalized by the Google Group of members for improving the products and services. From Google Annual Report-2007 it can be found that in 2008, the perceived and budgeted costs of in-process R&D sectors were $4,750,000,000 for generating more profits from the business. It has 5,788 employees in the R&D sectors of a total of 16,805 employees.
In contrast to Google, Microsoft is a leading IT-based business worldwide. The trends of budgeted costs in R&D sectors by it are given below:
Iansiti, (2007) argued that Microsoft is major concerned about software and internet business for their consumers. For this reason, they are increasing their R&D costs from 2% to 9% in other services but lowering the costs of software and internet business.
Needham, (2007) mentioned that Yahoo! Inc as to the most popular mailing and search engine worldwide, is also concerning about the research and development process. From the annual report of Yahoo, the actual costs of R&D are $688 million, where the estimation of 2007 and 2008 respectively are $828 and $927 million for increasing the sales and market value of their products and services.
Google: Type of change
Google with lots of competition and high costs in R&D sectors have to develop some changes in their technologies, product and services and other sections of its business.
Technology
Google is using Japanese management consultants to the improvement of its technology. The little bit changes do not affect on customer’s mind, but have various facilities like incremental innovations, the adaption of computing concepts, and understand the complexity of Linux. In the portion of changes, PageRank is most important, which determines the number of pages link to a particular page of different sources. Another improvement is the block approach to large systems in free services in the following ways:
In contrast to choosing hardware, Google changes racks, cable placement, and cooling devices, and data center layout. The changes in software like suitable hardware and network infrastructure are also linked with Google technologies. So, the new changes in Google can be:
Product/service
There are various types of products and services offered by Google to its customers. These are:
From the recent studies, Google forecasted on the changes of products according to customers’ preferences, such as:
- To search information also from library web site.
- More rely on free information.
- To being satisfied with recent searched information.
- To being as self-served.
In recent, Google has developed hardware and software expertise to make applications quickly, to deliver high reliable services and to provide low cost hardware. Some applications of server, which make great changes in Google services, are given:
Strategy
In Google, the strategy has been taken with the decision of top level management in the corporate business. The decisions are taken by following ways:
The recent change in strategy is developing Google’s Telecom services with legacy in technological changes. The market of this is captured by search based advertisement with value and corporate maturities. So, the strategy of search based business as holding the other services, for example:
The main strategic goals of Google are the communications with potential customers with frenzy of activities, across several factors with telecommunications, media and infotainment.
Structure
In the structure of Google, it is always using advert text without any liability of trade mark in keyword search with brand owner community. The brand owners are set as so to being in prime placement in search results. In the preference of Google structure, there are many factors to be considered, like:
The recent change of Google is in Adsense Referral Units in structure. It is related with the matter of location with success of referral units with experiments and pricing structure. This change is not so beneficial for Google as withdrawing the products from market.
Culture
There is various form of Google organisation’s cultural system, which are:
- In active feedback system, the self monitoring, seeking ideas and feedback about the information is followed by Google. In passive form, comment boxes to complaint from customers are taken by this.
- In the technology preferences, the business intelligences are chosen, whereas, business wisdom is using to determine the structure of Google.
- The structured information is rigid, for this reason, it is using less in categories. On the other hand, unstructured feedback is free from any boundaries of rigid-ness and has high subjective matters.
- The practice of expert performances are chosen as top down or bottom up approach of leadership by experts. But in non-experts or other employees are treated as in mutual monitoring for their performances.
Recommendations from Organization Stand Point:
From the success story of Google, it is easily understandable that, it is one of the top brands in IT business with mail and other search engine facilities. They are concerning more on the expenses regarding R&D sectors to capture the market and increase the sales volume of it. But the focus is on the current changes in various factors of organisation. It is successful in changing their technologies, products, strategy and culture but there are still some drawbacks in the structural changes. From the view point of experts of Google, they should be more focused on their structure with other factors.
Conclusion
As an online portal and customer care services, with technical development in the enterprise level, Google is become more popular day by day. The potential customers are increasing for different ranges of support programs with specific requirements, which help to compete with other organisations. For using high R&D services and development in changes in business with the demand of customers, it gets more profitable and earns strong place in the market.
Bibliography
Barker J., 2004, Google Defaults and Google Preference Settings, Web.
Google, 2007, Google News, Web.
Google, 2007, The Google Legacy, Google Technology, Web.
Google, 2007, Google Annual Report – 2007, Web.
Iansiti, M., 2007, Supplemental Expert Report- Microsoft Corporation, Web.
Needham, 2007, Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) – Buy, Web.
Seagram K., 2009, Google Culture and the Threefold Way, Web.
Tebbutt, K., 2008, Recent Changes to the Google Adwords Trade Mark Policy in the UK and Ireland, Web.