The notes from interviewing Roger

hopefully this will keep the colour difference when I cut and paste from word ...


Do you think that Google will encounter increased resistance and interference in its business strategies from the EU, the UN, USA (Justice Department) in regard to how it pushes the legal “boundaries”?- data/search privacy (Google reduces its data anonymisation from 18 to 9months)- censorship by pressure from national governments (Google at the behest of a number of western governments has filtered out Nazi sites)- censorship via business pressure from national governments (Google does very well in China because it censors “sensitive to the government” sites from hits – e.g. free Tibet)

· There are four possible areas that could lead resistance against Google (see bottom) most are ineffectual. Controls by the Regulators (one of the four) has been lukewarm at best. EU’s Article 29 has “forced” Google to reduce the length of time it keeps data to 9 months when it should have aimed for the life of a search session.Google has/is very adept at being able to impose censorship (as with the People’s Republic of China and not share any of the blame – partially on its catch-cry “do no evil” when it can be argued it does evil – simply doing nothing is tacit acceptance of evil.

With the increased concern over privacy and conflict with freedom of information do you think that Google has “painted itself into a corner” from a business perspective? i.e. is Google in danger of losing flexibility which is a key asset for any organisation.

· Not Yet. This may happen when there is a competitor in the market that really wants to challenge Google for position.

With Google applying censorship do you think that this will compromise its search engine and make it more vulnerable to a better tool (censoring will impose a time burden that the new tool will be able to exploit)?

No. The development team working on improving the search engine would be acutely aware of the potential for slowing response times and guard against that. Restructuring the hit list can be argued as evidence of this.

Is imposing a penalty to organisations like KinderStart censorship or a legitimate business response to protect its revenue source from being compromised?

· Google’s action is legitimate countermeasure against “gaming the system”.

Will Google be forced to affect its own search tool if a finding as in the KinderStart case went against Google? Thus the courts have in effect damaged Google’s ability to protect its revenue sources and to innovate and develop its products?

The courts may in the future make findings against Google but everything to date has not affected Google’s approach to its business and the methods it has used to protect same.

Undertaking a service to provide a digital index of every newspaper (from local to national) globally provide a great temptation to potentially manipulate items to the advantage of another party (a la George Orwell’s 1984)? Does this represent an attempt to “undermine” most national collections of their own newspapers?Are there controls that we should impose to ensure the security of a potential national asset?What are your views?Is this another form of censorship as initially it can be seen that western nationals newspapers would be the logical choice to digitise – thus a censoring of those who are not from a first world nation.

Can be seen as a process to undermine the Press. However the Media and Google have a very good relationship. This could be because the media see that they are losing sway via print and that Google offers an alternative that they can use to maintain presence and revenue feeding off Google’s Advertisement revenue empire. The danger with digitising all the newspapers is that people are lazy and that the amount of veracity checking will reduce – national collections can be seen to “cut their losses” and not keep their own data and become totally reliant on a third party – Google.Only three newspaper sites are “protected” from crawlerbots –
WSJ (Wall Street Journal),
AFR(?? Australian Financial Review), and the
FT (Financial Times)

-----

There are only four groups that can potentially can force Google to change its ways:
1. National (and International) Regulators;
2. The Media;
3. Individuals en masse (though this needs an event to promote universal condemnation); and
4. Public Interest Groups (of two forms).
Public Interest groups Business Aligned
PI EFF
EPIC (European) CDT
APF
Canadian
EFA
Public interest groups have been gaining traction in discussions with Google – heightened when some of their launches have missed the target.

Google have been consistently failing to understand local (national/regional) cultures. In launching Street view in Australia although warned of concerns over a number of items – such as displaying women’s refuges, people, aboriginal communities, private places – such as private roads, infants schools etc, they published without taking counsel. This created an unexpected backlash and caused a “hasty” retreat. Mechanism for requesting data be removed from the street view is hidden in the help function – not obvious. Removal is not instantaneous in some cases items remained for days. The current removal process still identifies issues as it highlights that something has been removed – Google now have to work on removing the blank space so to give the impression of continuity – not yet done.

Major weakness:
· Googleplex (the Senior Management) understands technology but not culture and to a major extent people from a social perspective (as in community structures (cities, states, nations).
· Believes that technology can solve everything and they ride roughshod over the rest. A sign of immaturity.
· Would benefit from appointing “culture gurus” to advise them on local sensitivities before launching – and thus creating bad publicity
· Upsetting the media could also become a major issue – but is currently managed very well. Currently Google has neutralised public bad perceptions though its media savvy and associations.
· Google has a very weak statement – when you can find it privacy statement with their products. The privacy statements are not consistent across their product range.
· Google has not looked at its algorithm with Business Intelligence (BI) – Microsoft and IBM are paying serious attention to this new market space – that was created by Google’s push for a simplistic search approach.

Big Brother Google
Stages:
1. Content Discovery ServicesGoogle have the largest coverage reference listhave the smartest precedence algorithm (for sorting the results)designed for the lowest common denominator and one of the reasons for its successmultiple constrained searches (images, blogs and Froogle)does provide multiple extension services (Answers and Scholar)
2. Content ServicesGoogle EarthGoogle BaseYouTube/Google VideoGoogle NewsGoogle Library/Print
3. Data about Users“We are moving to a Google that knows more about you” Google CEO 10 Feb 2005 – very Big Brotherishachieved via:-search terms, IP-addresses, click trail, click throughs, email accounts (Gmail), cookies, desktop, free wireless IAP, Ad syndication (AdSense), Orkut (the Google Facebook), consumer profiles, psych profiles from online games, Google now owns a tool for ad placement in games, face recognition (within images)

Google Mythology “Do No Evil”Protecting users’s privacy is very important to Google … No!
DIY Privacy Protection
Google’s Privacy statement

How Vulnerable is Google on Search?

Answer - seems static an invulnerable to minor advancements in other engines. Some potential for hubris.

Read Write Web

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Questions for Roger Clarke

· Do you think that Google will encounter increased resistance and interference in its business strategies from the EU, the UN, USA (Justice Department) in regard to how it pushes the legal “boundaries”?- data/search privacy (Google reduces its data anonymisation from 18 to 9months)- censorship by pressure from national governments (Google at the behest of a number of western governments has filtered out Nazi sites)- censorship via business pressure from national governments (Google does very well in China because it censors “sensitive to the government” sites from hits – e.g. free Tibet)

· With the increased concern over privacy and conflict with freedom of information do you think that Google has “painted itself into a corner” from a business perspective? i.e. is Google in danger of losing flexibility which is a key asset for any organisation.

· With Google applying censorship do you think that this will compromise its search engine and make it more vulnerable to a better tool (censoring will impose a time burden that the new tool will be able to exploit)?

· Is imposing a penalty to organisations like KinderStart censorship or a legitimate business response to protect its revenue source from being compromised?

· Will Google be forced to affect its own search tool if a finding as in the KinderStart case went against Google? Thus the courts have in effect damaged Google’s ability to protect its revenue sources and to innovate and develop its products?

· Undertaking a service to provide a digital index of every newspaper (from local to national) globally provide a great temptation to potentially manipulate items to the advantage of another party (a la George Orwell’s 1984)? Does this represent an attempt to “undermine” most national collections of their own newspapers?Are there controls that we should impose to ensure the security of a potential national asset?What are your views?Is this another form of censorship as initially it can be seen that western nationals newspapers would be the logical choice to digitise – thus a censoring of those who are not from a first world nation.

Porter's 5 forces for Google

Repost from James original in full.

Force	Impact on Google
Supplier/Power	Google is regionally not globally dominant. Competition Elimination and Substitution: Microsoft embedding their search tool into their Explorer browser. Threat of forward integration – Google search may not perform as well with new software releases from Microsoft and Apple.
Barriers to Entry (Potential for New Market Entrants)	Yahoo & Microsoft have radically improved their search engines and can on pass/deploy their search tool through their products. There is no such thing as the perfect search engine – thus a better search engine invented by another will critically affect Google – mayhap even mortally as 40% of the company revenue comes from advertising which is driven through the search engine. Online marketing and the rules governing what is good and bad practices (e.g. cloaking <reference>) are still evolving – this could affect Google’s current technology and philosophy. Switching costs are mostly related to hardware (storage of indices and speed of information return) and accuracy related (webbots/crawlers) Search tools are easily scalable. While there is currently not a great degree of ‘legislative interference’ this will most likely change <web reference to Google and Big Brother>
Competitive Rivalry (Degree of Rivalry)	<Level>. Rules/ethic have not been defined so the environment is easily exploited or manipulated. Currently there are only a few rivals (Microsoft, Yahoo) so the degree of rivalry is more oriented to an oligarchy – this could bring attention of UN or individual countries as a restriction of trade in the future. Switching costs for most of the search tools are nothing. Brand identity is important (if not paramount – Google has made the language as a noun and a verb) Rival search tools are not dissimilar to Google’s tool. Search tools are also used without overt referencing (which impinges on their discoverability) – eBay’s search tool is Google. Improving on the search engine and its features is a significant task for a large number of highly skilled IT technologists.
Treat of Substitutes (Product & Technology) Development	High. Switching costs are negligible Buyer inclination to substitute is primarily driven by speed and accuracy of the result and also by the overt pushing of ads that are included with the search results and pages. Users of the search tool are demanding more services and complexity or sophistication with the search tool to remain ‘loyal’ to its use. Ad Revenue is directly related to use - - even the loss of a small percentage of use can mean significant revenue loss to Google or the other search generating companies. Technology requires extremely skilled staff – high degree of competition for a limited pool. Loss of company/trade secrets if skilled staff more from one search generating organisation to another.
Buyer Power	Use of the search rankings is a significant leverage point by the owners of search tools in bargaining. Loss of ranking has in the past led to costly legal arguments – equivalent of e_defamation_of_character or denial of services <add references> Users of the search tool are becoming more sophisticated and demanding other services also for free. Substitutes are available – and for the same price: free No real reviews are undertaken on what features the web community would like to see so each search company employs researches to straw poll/guess directions. Two client groups – web community wanting to search/locate items and the organisations selling products – have to satisfy both client groups equally. Threat of backward integration?

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Strategic Options Breakdown

I was thinking of a way to breakdown the strategies so that we can break up the analysis job. Not really trying to be a 'master of lists'.

I think temporal is the most interesting with Google:

i) 1st order - Porter and competitive behaviours. Direct resources and constraints.
ii) 2nd order - capabilities. New product development.
iii) 3+ order - market creation.

Originally I was thinking of competitive and R&C with a bit of other stuff that does not quite fit in:

a) Competitive strategies - marketplace oriented. Porter, BCG.
b) Customer focused - resources and capability models. Based on 7s.
c) Everything else - which are in my quick review 2nd order things. Market creation, diversification across markets.

Google
a) would have things like partnering with Yahoo, tying customers in with adsense and analytics
b) work to realign a technical capability to marketing challenges
c) develop search engine use on phone, develop software distribution mechanism supported by embedded advertising. Development of software as a service.

Google outlines the future of searching

http://itnews.com.au/News/85040,google-outlines-possible-future-of-search.aspx

OK I did a flurry of using the work PC at lunch time ...

Google outs Microsoft and assimilates with Yahoo
http://itnews.com.au/News/84989,google-ceo-says-ready-to-move-ahead-on-yahoo-deal.aspx

Yahoo-Google opposition to the "merger": http://itnews.com.au/News/84826,opposition-mounts-to-googleyahoo-search-tieup.aspx

Google moving into data centres that use wave power (the green part of triple and sustainability credentials)
http://itnews.com.au/News/84782,google-applies-for-floating-data-centres-patent.aspx

Microsoft buying back shares - on the light on not getting Yahoo

We could also use this in our analysis http://itnews.com.au/News/85237,microsoft-plans-debt-issue-40b-share-buyback.aspx

I will see what I can turn up on this for Google

and on the paranoia front that we were discussing

about Google being a tempting target: http://itnews.com.au/News/85078,eff-sues-bush-cheney-et-al-for-att-spying.aspx

Android Announcment

The announcement video.

I might have found out about the live version via twitter. Hope the on-demand version is accessible from the same link. Hopefully they will edit it to 5 minutes.

- open platforms: interesting from a competition perspective. Also may make telecommunications companies competitors. Both platform and network open? Do we expect similar changes as per AOL and e-world? Announced phone is network locked and subsidised. Didn't last long with iPhone. E.g. Hutchison has lost $m (not sure of breakdown) in Australia building portals. No MS exchange application - direct feature comparison with iPhone. Intend for all this to be developed by third parties (push email aka Blackberry, sync apps).
- disruptive innovation
- why did Google invest in mobile platform? Good question for me. It is a platform at least 2 steps removed from advertising. 16% of people use mobile internet in U.S. Market making strategy.

- change is facilitated through the open platform. Contradiction to competitive barriers? Developer 'ecosystem' adapts with changing customer needs and environment.

Logical conclusion is that pure bulk of internet access is important to Google.

John

Firefox customisegoogle plugin

Bit of a risk for Google - removes the advertising from the results page.

Customise Google

Could be a reason for having Chrome rather than supporting Firefox. Counter to the 'Not invented here' idea.

John

Stakeholder circle

Yes finally our outside access works ...
http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Stakeholder_Circle.html

Possible future #3: Disruptive Technology Effects

Back to the 70,20,10 rule - Google is spending 10% of their resources on research type activities.

Disruptive technologies appear to be both an opportunity and a risk for Google. For example upcoming search engines may replace the Google search engine from its highly visited position. This would remove the core of its advertising network and increase Google's dependence on third party web-sites for exposure to its advertising. This is clearly a highly valued resource given the billions Google has spent acquiring sites such as youtube and partnering with sites such as MySpace.

From Google's annual report:

If we do not continue to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, we may not remain competitive, and our revenues and operating results could suffer.


The launch of the iPhone 3G is a recent example of how new technologies benefit Google.

Google clearly has a mobile technology road map, and is addressing mobiles directly through the creation of the Android platform. An unusual strategic approach given that it is open and they don't own a supporting hardware business.

There are a broad range of other Google explorations which to me sometimes make me ask why is Google doing this? The example of sharable applications cited in a previous post to this blog are another example.

Here is an overview of android.

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Possible future #2 Brand

One of the key risks to Google is branding.

Nielson puts it quite abruptly:

NIELSEN: By loosening up their reputation, by sort of still maintaining this feeling of, "Oh we're just two kind of grad students hanging out and having a beer and having a grand old time," not you know, "We are 16,000 people working on undermining your privacy."

Increasing size and need for revenue growth to support market expectations puts pressure on the image of benevolence and trust that Google fosters.

Google's brand was valued at $66.4b in 2007. If people are to use services such as gmail then trust is an important factor. This is trust in a lot of respects, not just privacy but also reliability.

I think this is a second important area that we need to investigate.

Yahoo video this time:

Google Fails Privacy tests @ Yahoo! Video

More reliability: Gottapi, O'Reilly 2006.

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Possible future #1 Slowing Growth

For the Tushman congruence analysis I need some strategic challenges - more on that later.

The first part of the report - description of the strategic future.

Google has continued growth  built into the expectations of its shareholders. Current P/E is almost 30, even in an environment where the average stock prices have decreased  - NADAQ from 2700 to 2100. MSFT has a P/E of 13.5. Yahoo has a P/E of 27 although its price is up significantly on due to attempted merger activity which have now morphed into partnering with Google.

   
If revenue does not increase at a significant rate, then the increasing costs of maintaining their own site network may result in a loss. They have the costs of consolidating a large number of businesses (analysis needed).

Google does list in their annual report a number of pretty big picture risks. Again more information is required on how big Google expects to get. This ties in with my possible future #2 where Google hurts it's brand.



Notes: Claburn How Google Might Fail

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Interesting very interesting

Gentlemen
look - what we were discussing: http://www.icharter.org/insight/msft_yhoo_google.html

My PC died yesterday so am at work trying to recover the work I had hoped to have ready for you ... I have done some work on the paper - but not as much as I had planned will post to the uni site so you can have a look

James

Roger Clarke a lecturer who taught some e-business classes I was in was an undergraduate, has written several papers on Google, including What's Google Really Up To?

Two points relevant to strategy are regarding competitive position and potential futures of Google.

Competitive position. Discussion of cross-leveraging of business units. Competitive advantage through leverage of legal (copyright) and proprietary knowledge of consumers. Forces include changing consumer expectations towards information availability and attitudes to information gathering.

Future of Google. Will commercial challenges damage the value that people derive from Google. Will this be a destructive conflict?

Analysis

Gentlemen
I have done some more analysis and posted it to google docs. Greg you should see what it does to the 3 phase diagram lol
I am working on the structure of the report as well and will post that as soon as I can. ... work's been demanding
James

BCG on Google Services

I have carried out a BCG assessment on Google's top 20 products (predominately based on some Market Share analysis) below;

If anyone can contribute with regard to more information on each of the product's market growth rate that would be great.

Search dominance is not lasting - possible reason #2

For the first time I am convinced that there might be a better search engine. Or at least different search engines for different purposes.

I was musing about how sometimes I will only know what I am looking for when I see it. Well - try this out.

Searchme.com

Cuil is well - cool - but in my opinion, not as cool as searchme.

Cheers
John

Possible reason #1 that Google does software at all

A basic congruence analysis would indicate that out of Google's 19,000 employees more than 1% of them are technical people - probably not supporting the core marketing business.

Here Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks about how he expects software to become viral. What he means is that people will change the way they consume software. Software will come in small packages and you will discover it 'socially' or by referral. Does this tie software and Google's position as an internet marketing company together?

What is Google?

What is Google?

Is it a venture capital firm for tech startups? I don't think so. See this interview by Scobleizer. Microsoft is suffering from disruption because they have a 'business' model for developing applications and Google just does it. Why?

Why does Google even play in the same application space as Microsoft? Most of Google's revenue comes comes from advertising - 99%.

Google have a 62% U.S. market share in internet search advertising. 80% in Australia. This is a market that has been growing at 50-60% per annum and is forecast to continue growing at 30-40% per annum.

Why did they create Google docs when Microsoft has the dominant office environment? Our market analysis would indicate this was a bad idea. Perhaps as an internet applications company it makes more sense for them to create their own browser - but Microsoft Internet Explorer still has 72% of worldwide market share . Shouldn't they be trying other strategies like partnering?

Haven't they just forced a competitive challenge from Microsoft? Microsoft then has to be seen to tackling Google's dominant position - they have 8.5% of the U.S. search advertising market. Double looser.

Google 2007 Annual Report

Online version - http://investor.google.com/documents/2007_Google_AnnualReport.html

PDF Version - http://investor.google.com/pdf/2007_Google_AnnualReport.pdf

A start of Porter's five forces

Gentlemen
after a frustrating day at work I have managed to get away from the work mess and enter my scratchings for a Porter review.
I have published on our uni site: http://wt3.mbt.unsw.edu.au/wt3_2008s2/wt_system/SeminarRoomPT.cfm?class=31&SR_TID=882

Bee on
J

Google SWOT

Full SWOT analysis posted to our webteach site (i.e. now includes Opportunities and Threats)

http://wt2-3.mbt.unsw.edu.au/wt3_2008s2/wt_system/file_send.cfm?filetosend=8801B537E8ABBF905088DE686246495474002527&filetosendalias=GoogleB%5FGA110908A%2Edoc

Google unveils "white space" airwaves plans

In my reserach on S&W came accross another Google "disruptive innovation" which has huge potential

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSWAT00918220080324

Google Strengths and Weaknesses

Have published a word doc to webteach outlining key strategically significant strenghs and weaknesses of Google.

http://wt2-3.mbt.unsw.edu.au/wt3_2008s2/wt_system/file_send.cfm?filetosend=92A85F78E277F189EE8A407D7DAFC59810577858&filetosendalias=GoogleB%5FGA100908A%2Edoc

In summary key strategic items are....

Strengths

• Strong Market Position
• Proprietary technology and technological
  infrastructure
• AdWords and AdSense programs

Weaknesses

• Reliance on Google Network members
• Weak presence in social networking domain
• Lack of product integration

More detail of the above can be found at the above link

Google & the Big Brother effect

Gentlemen
another angle: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/09/2360246.htm

Overview and History of Google Inc.

Gentlemen
I will publish this as a word doc on our uni site and I will email it to you directly as well:

• 
  Google began in 1996 as a collaboration of two Stanford doctoral students: Sergey Brin and Larry Page on a search engine known as ‘BackRub’. That engine, uniquely, analysed back links (the information that points to a website).
  
• The space demands of the search engine outgrew the student’s ability to satisfy the need. Sergey Brin began looking for business partners who, by licensing the use of the search tool would allow the students to afford the equipment they needed.- demonstrated the engine to Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun Systems) who provided them with the seed capital for their company.
  
• By 1999 Google was answering >500,000 calls daily and had begun signing up major organisations that needed a webpresence and searching tool (Netscape, AOL).
  
• From 2000 Google began diversifying from being strictly a web page search tool. Functionality it has created or bought and badge reengineered include:
  AdWords: a keyword targeted advertising program
  Google Toolbar: an add in for a persons web browser using google;
  Google Zeitgeist[1] – now Google HotTrends: identifies most popular trends
  Image Search: search tool for images based on meta data
  Googlebot: an automated software tool that continually crawls the web updating
  pages links etc
  GoogleCompute: similar to SETI allows people to donate unused computer cycles to
  unis that need computational power
  Froogle: online food shopping
  Google Labs: have the general public beta test potential products
  GoogleNews: latest news from 1>400 newspapers & media outlets
  Blogger: web logs
  GoogleCalendar: online calendar that people can share
  GoogleAdSense: places highly targeted ads next to search content
  Gmail: an email address for people
  GoogleSMS have information from searches sent directly to mobile devices
  GoogleEarth images of the planet from satellites
  GoogleSitemaps prioritise the pages crawled on a site
  GoogleTalk early form of Skype
  GoogleBlogSearch search tool for trawling blogs
  GoogleBase a structured tool for uploading information
  GoogleAnalytics a tool that analyses the effectiveness of pages and content
  GooglePrint a public domain book search tool can now download PDF copies of the
  book
  GoogleChat integration of email and texting from mobile devices
  GoogleCheckout secure, fast convenient shopping service
  GoogleGroups the updated version of Usenet
  Knol: the Google version of Wikipedia
  Google.org Google’s philanthropic company
  
• To date Google “own” 88% of the search market in Australia alone and have > 100 domains!
  
• Google have acquired companies that have them provided them with service that are offered free to the online community – such as PryaLabs for blogs, and Keyhole Corporation for digital and satellite images (GoogleEarth, GoogleMaps), YouTube.
  
• Like NEC Google has been very selective and yet audacious in its partnership arrangements. For example it has partnerships with eBay (advertising), with Fox Integrated Media (thus linking to MySpace), most of the mobile phone companies (Motorola, Vodaphone, Telefonica KDDI).
  
• Google has strategic alliances with Intuit, Dell Computers, Sky Broadcasting
  
• Google has recently acquired Adscape – an innovative in-game advertiser, Trendanalyser – whose software generates dynamic graphics and special effects, and Zenter – presentation tools.
  
• Google have begun looking at the use of IT in the Healthcare industry and have recently released a beta version of their own browser “Chrome”.
  
  
• Google conforms to the Seven People Management Practices developed by Pfeffer and Veiga. These being:-
  1. Employment Security;
  2. Selective Hiring;
  3. Self Managed Teams and Decentralised as basic elements of Organisation Design (e.g. AdSense is operated and developed in Hyderabad in India)
  4. Comparatively high compensation contingent on organisational performance;
  5. Extensive training;
  6. Reduction of status differences
  7. Share information
  
  
• Google has created and developed new markets for its advertisement income stream– such as paying bloggers to place ads on their pages and increasing the revenue it obtains in the process
  
  
  [1] Zeitgeist (German) = Spirit of the times

NETT# Magazine Arcticle on Google (Sept 08)

Here are some uploads from the NETT# magazine article I mentioned at yesterdays meeting

1. Google extends lead (graph showing leading on competitors)
   
2. One trillion pages (a few facts)
   
3. Does Google control the internet? (feature article on Googles web authority)

Meeting Notes and Actions - #1

Meeting notes and actions for the Google B(ee) team

Meeting #: 1
Date/time: 8th September 11am
Present: John (JR), Greg (GA), James (JT)
Location: GA & JR at JR’s place with teleconference to JT

Notes and Actions;

1. Blog site to be fully utilised with research information etc from all including voice and video meetings where possible. JR to resend blog invitation to GA.
   
2. JT accepted role of assignment editor.
   
3. JR accepted role of team leader.
   
4. GA accepted role of researcher and team meeting coordinator.
   
5. GA to complete team agreement and issue for 2nd draft (will post to Webteach).
   
6. To get us started the following actions were agreed to be completed by the end of this week;
   a) JT to write Google company overview and post to blog
   b) JR to prepare report structure/format based on assignment model
   c) GA to prepare Google Strengths and Weakness analysis.
   
7. All agreed with 11am weekly teleconference meetings. GA to issue outlook meeting request with contact details.

Typical

I read 21 pages of Google history and ....

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/google-10-years-old-and-still-searching/2008/09/07/1220725858555.html

appears I will try and have a draft in dot point form ready this evening which I will post here and cut and paste to the blog.

Some other interesting articles - on what we spoke about yesterday google moving into the browser market with chrome:http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/new-google-browser-muscles-in-on-microsoft/2008/09/02/1220121183420.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/chrome-has-defensive-component-google-boss/2008/09/05/1220121482312.html and

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/googles-chrome-browser-ready-for-download/2008/09/03/1220121278690.html

Welcome to Our Analysis of Google's Strategic Options

Welcome to our analysis of the strategic options available to Google.

The purpose of this blog is to capture 'facts, evidence and objective information' regarding google and develop a discussion leading to 'explicit and strategic management conclusions'.

If you know anything about Google or strategic management, then please help us out by commenting on our posts.

This blog fulfills a requirement of the group assignment for the University of New South Wales Business & Technology Program, Strategic Management of Business and Technology course.

The strategic management process, according to our course involves:

Strategic vision -> objectives -> formulation -> implementation -> monitoring
( Thompson, Strickland & Gamble 2008 p.20. Derived slides.)

This view from the MBT marketing course I have found most useful as it relates steps to tools:

1. Symptoms

2. Problem Definition

3. Situation Analysis

4. ** Strategic Choice
   
   

5. Implementation

Larger Image

We need to cover 1,2 & 3 in order to inform our choice of strategic options, however the focus is on #4 Strategic Choice.

This will be a fun project - Google provides a lot of ground to cover.

What is its vision? What are the problems it is facing? Even accounting for the various 'businesses' it has is likely to be an interesting exercise. What areas are winning? What is the current strategy of Google? Does it have one? Why does it bug Microsoft? Isn't adwords enough? After that I guess we should do the matching of theoretical strategies and scenario work that needs to make up the bulk of our report. Will we all be eating google pie in a couple of years time?

James's Self Evaluation (Belpin Team Roles)

Gentlemen
Hello once again me self assessment. ... for what its worth :-)

Item
Section a b c d e f g h
I 2 2 1 1 1 3
II 2 1 1 2 3 1
III 2 1 1 1 1 3 1
IV 2 2 2 2 2
V 2 2 2 2 2
VI 3 2 2 3
VII 2 1 2 1 4
Total 12 5 10 9 10 3 11 10

sorry about the crappy look I have it as a word table and of course can't upload that

J

its a Bee :-)

Gentlemen

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