Could be yet another interesting diversion for us if we had another month or 2 to do the report. Anyway, test the hypothesis that 'Google is not big overseas'. Could be a cultural thing that they demonstrated they didn't get with street-view. Could be just that being big globally is hard.

O'Brien: Why we'll all soon forget about Google's Android

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Innovation and Risk Taking at Google

Shona Brown is the 'Senior Vice President, Business Operations' at Google.

She wrote Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos:

Brown has made a career of arguing that anarchy isn't such a bad thing--which is why Page, co-founder Sergey Brin, and CEO Eric Schmidt hired her in 2003

(Fortune Magazine)

(Adam Lashinsky. Fortune. New York: Oct 2, 2006. Vol. 154, Iss. 7; pg. 86)

This reference fills in some gaps as to how Google runs its operations. It fits in with our analysis that Google is 'Theory O' and 7s/congruence are tied to their take on the environment and
disruptive innovation:

The way to succeed in "fast-paced, ambiguous situations," she tells me, is to avoid creating too much structure, but not to add too little either.

Our basic narrative of maturity and managing financial and brand risks and how to maintain oversight/governance while still maintaining the devolved organisation structure.

Google is  reminiscent of Enron 'Smartest Guys in the Room' in organisation structure and outwardly ethos.

John


Yes - I still have my posts about 7s in drafts - will also add to report.

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Interactive/digital marketing growth rates

Post from Kate - fits into scenarios. Marketing growth supposedly trails economic growth (ref needed), so growth in digital may continue growth path (ref needed). I suspect not as quickly as in the past though:

CMOs report reduction & shift in marketing spend to digital

According to recent research by Epsilon "Chief Marketing Officers at many of the biggest brands in the nation [USA] are seeing a major shift in the marketing landscape. Almost two-thirds (63%) of the 175 marketing executives surveyed see an increase in their spending on interactive/digital marketing while 59% report a decrease in traditional marketing spend."

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Evolutionary Advantage

I was researching Google organisation structure and came across this interesting perspective on Google from leading corporate strategy theorist Gary Hamel - circa 2006 (Opinion – Wall Street Journal).

Hamel discuss Google novel management system (evolutionary advantage) which attributes to why it revenues grew (which it has) and could grow more. He compares 4 Evolutionary risk factors that typical businesses fail at against that of Google.

The 2nd last paragraph about the evolution of Google is quite a convincing summary – so much so that it made me question that maybe Google is on the right track with its strategies??? and should we be considering in our report that no changes should be made???

This article would be a good cross check on some of our ideas

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114601763677436091-RZdaVtvykRAz4EhCKs0KervA0Eo_20060503.html?mod=blogs

Google Sites Supporting Google AdSense

Google Sites Supporting Google AdSense

Analysis by product makes it seem a myth. The 70-20-10 rule mentioned in the Google annual report that is. Maybe it is different by expense?

"We are still keeping to our long-standing plan of devoting 70% of our resources to search and advertising. We debate where we should classify our Apps (Gmail, Docs, etc) products but they
currently fall into the 20% of resources we devote to related businesses. We use the remaining 10% of our resources on areas that are farther afield but have huge potential, such as Andriod."

The report says 'search and advertising' but most of the search applications don't have any advertising and there is not much revenue from search. I can only see the main search engine and gmail with advertising. The rest nothing...

Android could push mobile use and lead to more visitors, visiting the main search engine site more often and consuming the advertising - the mobile version does have the advertising? The book search does not currently have advertising and as such does not fit into my view of the current e-business model at all.

I started doing the whole-product diagram. I knew of this from Moore although it is similar to the
Kotler 'Three Layer Product Model'. I ended up with 4 as I had 'enablers' which are not actual features but are important to Google. Also, maybe, I didn't study it hard enough. Most of the products on the Google product list I didn't find a spot for.

This has thrown the idea that everything fitted nicely together around advertising (the 70) into disarray. Help - how does it all fit together?

Full Size


Google Product descriptions

Product	URL	Advertising	Competitors	Description	Price	Competitive play	business case
Alerts		No				compliments search
Blog search		No
book search		No	reuters, proquest, amazon			compliments search
catalogs		Yes – but free	salmat au – lasoo.com.au	shopping catalogue site		compliments search
custom search engine		No		search proliferation
desktop		No
directory		No
earth		No
finance		No
gears		No
images		No
language tools
maps
personalised search
product search
scholar
sketchup
toolbar						Positions the search engine countering owners of applications control
web accelerator
web search
Ads
adsense
adwords
analytics
Applications
apps		Yes – gmail				Entry + education + business + partner (portals) editions
blogger		No – user option through adwords				Develop on-line communication – potentially replace office documents
calendar		No				Develop on-line practise
checkout		No	PayPal, card providers, bpay (Aus), Western Union			Payments play? Become an e-commerce player
code						Potential for advertising. Support software development . Potential access to software creators. Perhaps an 'app-store' concept will develop?
Docs & spreadsheets		No				Develop the habit of using web-applications? Demonstration?
gmail		Yes – gmail			$USD20/yr = 10Gb, $50/yr/account professional
groups		No – only google products				?? - brand?
labs						brand/innovation. Improvements to applications
news		No
notebook
orkut		No	facebook			Facebook has adverts, sells stakes in business to content sharing partners
pack						Desktop version of picassa
picasa		No
picasa web albums		No			Storage
reader
talk
translate						Value-add to search
video
webmaster tools
youtube		No – only google products				Value-add to search
Enterprise
earth for enterprise/google pro
maps for enterprise
Mini
Search appliance
sketchup pro
Mobile
Mobile
dodgeball

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Microsoft launches 'frequent clicker program'

Up the competitive ante in search - Microsoft air miles plan to attack Google - Financial Times

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Does Google Need to Reign in it's ambition

Solving everything is not strategy.

San Francisco Chronicle describes how solving global warming, mapping the moon might be 'non-core'. Google founders respond by saying that such things will not divert significant resources.

Positives for being involved in environmental initiatives are managing sustainability issues from i) huge amount of energy that Google uses in data centres ii) good PR.

"Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Wunderlich Securities, said he wasn't worried about Google getting distracted by its expansive portfolio. In terms of products, Pyykkonen said Google's strategy is to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks."

I could not find more basis to Pyykkonen quote - time to go for sirius I guess.

Also here blogger Battelle

"2008 will be the year Wall Street gets frustrated with Google. The company has incredible numbers, and will continue to impress, but analysts, tired of bidding up the stock, will start to question the company's myriad ocean-boiling projects - after all, it's merely trying to reinvent Health, Energy, Telecom, IT (both consumer apps and OSes), and a few other major portions of the GDP"

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