Content I. Introduction II. Company overview III. Products and services IV. Main competitors 2015 V. Profitability and US market share 2013 VI. Market Segmentation VII. SWOT analysis VIII. Google innovative corporate culture IX. Business strategy a) Early success b) Google’s way of business expansion c) 4Es of Google strategy

1. Case study Sovannasuos
Zaman University
Business Strategy
MIS 411 Section 1
Instructor: Timothy John Costelloe
Case Study: Google Inc.
Sovanna Suos
01/11/2016

2. Case study Sovannasuos
Content
I. Introduction
II. Company overview
III. Products and services
IV. Main competitors 2015
V. Profitability and US market share 2013
VI. Market Segmentation
VII. SWOT analysis
VIII. Google innovative corporate culture
IX. Business strategy
a) Early success
b) Google’s way of business expansion
c) 4Es of Google strategy

3. Case study Sovannasuos
I. Introduction
Business strategy is a plan which businesses must have in order to achieve its long-term business
planning, and by defining strategic plan clearly, businesses can outperform competitors and
achieve superior profitability. Business strategy gives detail information regarding how to retain
and attract more customers, compete against rivals and position the company in the marketplace.
In addition, it anticipants to unexpected occurrences such as changing economic and market
conditions, and depicts ways to capitalize on attractive chances to growth and achieve the
company’s performance targets.
The present case study will look closely to the current situation analysis of the Google Inc. on the
basis of its segmentation, market share, competitors, SWOT analysis and business strategy.
II. Company overview
Google is the leading internet search engine machine, which accounts for approximately 66 percent
of market share of desktop users worldwide and a proportion of 91 among mobile phone and tablet
devices. It was founded in 1998 in the United States. Although Google started with internet
searching service, in the present it owns more than 20 products and services. The most generated
profit service is Adword, an online advertising that specifies to who the advertisements appear and
focuses largely on key words.
”Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful.”
III. Popular products and services
Type of products Product names
Search engine Google Search
Productivity software Google Docs, Gmail
Cloud storage service Google Drive
Online advertising service AdSense, AdWords

4. Case study Sovannasuos
Social networking service Google+
IV. Industry identification and main competitors 2015
Industry Competitors
Search engine machine Bing
Yahoo
Baidu
Live
AOL
ASK
Lycos
V. Profitability and US Market Share 2013
Bottom-line, Google main competitors are Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing). Among the three search
engines, Bing recorded a loss of $1.3 billion dollar annually although they cut down operation loss
sharply in the last three quarters. Google and Yahoo experienced net profits of $12,9 billion dollar
and $1, billion dollar respectively.
Looking at the market share of the search engine market, Google remained dominant which was
at the largest proportion of 67.3% in 2013. It is north worthy to mention that Bing took customers
from Yahoo and increased its share to 18.2% in this period. Yahoo reported a decline of its market
share from 11.2 in November to 10.8 % in December 2013.

5. Case study Sovannasuos
VI. Segmentation analysis
1. Student: They are young people from the age of 18 – 28 from middle to upper-
middle class families. Their generation familiar very well with technologies and
internet. They use Google products and services for education, entertainment and
communication.
2. Expanding Enterprises: They are all businesses from a big corporation to family
business. They use Google products and services to reduce its operational cost and
to gain more customers in different geographic. They understand about internet
based market trend.
3. The leisurely fad-following families: They are middle-class to upper-middle-class
small families who have office works. Their purposes of using Google products are
for relaxation, entertainment and communication.

6. Case study Sovannasuos
VII. SWOT analysis
Strengths
• Market leader in search engine market
• Google provides open source products and services, and they always strive to offer
customers the best quality and has built trust and brand loyalty among global users.
• They now hold the largest market share.
• All of their product are integrated to one another and easily access, even from smart
phone.
• Their leadership and culture of empowerment and innovation play a major strength in
driving the success of this company.
Weaknesses
• Google relies mostly on profit from advertising which is equal to over 90% of its total
revenues. There are only 10% of profits comes from licensing and other revenues in
2014.
• Google does not perform will with the next generation computing platforms
Opportunities
• Android operating system
• Products are complementary to one another
• Google Play and Glasses
• Cloud computing
Threats
• Competition with Facebook, Apple and Samsung
VIII. Google Innovative Corporate Culture
Google respects and values everyone within their company. Google created a unique work
environment that attracts, encourages, and retains the best players in the field. For instance, people

7. Case study Sovannasuos
work at Google receive free breakfast, lunch, health and dental, haircuts, gyms and swimming
pools, hybrid car subsidies, nap pods, video games, foosball, ping pong and more . It was ranked
in Fortune magazine as the 4 best companies to work for in 2010. Google believes that “You can
be serious without a suit.” (Google, 2008)
Another interesting fact is that at Google there is a 70/20/10 rule. The rule divides working hour
at Google into three parts. Employees spend 70 percent of their time on their job tasks, 20 percent
on related projects, and 10 percent on unrelated new businesses.
IX. Business Strategy
An initial success of Google was from the quality of their search machine. Google gained its
popularity and trust from their simple, clean and fast search machine. Google delivers their
customers only the results that they want to see to make sure the information is useful.
a) What are Google business strategies?
Based on Porter’s model, Google uses differentiation strategy, with intensive growth strategies of
market penetration and product development. Google made their products or services different
from and more attractive than those of their competitors. Google differentiate itself through the
uniqueness of its products. They achieved this uniqueness by being a highly innovative company.
The increasing range of its products such as Google Search, Google Fiber and Google Glass, is a
display of this innovation under the differentiation strategy. The Google Search also advances over
time to guarantee competitive advantage against Yahoo and Microsoft.
b) What is the Google way of business expansion?
Google practiced three ways of expansion: new start-ups, acquisition, and strategic alliances.
Initiatives and startups: There is a rule at Google that all employees can have 20% of their
working time to spend on projects which are not related to their job fields. This practice has
returned them positive results for all years by not only focus on their core competencies well but
higher their employees’ engagement and motivation as well as helping them to keep innovating
and diversifying into new untouched businesses, for example, Google News and Gmail.

8. Case study Sovannasuos
Acquisitions: Besides having their own initiatives, Google also purchases new startups which
have potentially advantages to their expansion. Two current well-known web application sites
which were bought by Google are Docs and Youtube.
Alliances: In 2010 there was an arrangement concerning two Google and Yahoo to share resources
to undertake a specific, mutually beneficial projects to deliver exciting new cloud-based products
and services with the android platform.
c) The 4E's of Google Strategy
According to Steve Faktor, CEO of IdeaFaktory innovation incubator and an author of
Econovations, explains Google strategy using an approach he refers to as 4E’s strategy. This
approach can be divided into 4 elements: Earn, Entice, Expand, and Experiment.
Earn: Google makes 95% of its money from advertising. Secondly, it attracts people to use services
that can either deliver ads or collect data to improve targeting. Expand category where Google
pursues to rise internet usage. If you're online more, Google knows it will at the end of the day
benefit. Projects like self-driving cars or Wi-Fi balloons in Africa. Last but not least, Google lets
employees experiment. Some become developed products. (Faktor)

9. Case study Sovannasuos
References:
Bulygo, Z. (n.d.). Inside Google’s Culture of Success and Employee Happiness. Retrieved
January 11, 2016, from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/googles-culture-of-success/
Customer Profile for Google Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved January 11, 2016, from
http://www.slideshare.net/abail019/customer-profile-for-google-inc
Customer Profile for Google Inc. (n.d.). Retrieved January 11, 2016, from
http://www.slideshare.net/abail019/customer-profile-for-google-inc
Faktor, S. (2013, June 28). Google's Strategy Explained. Retrieved January 11, 2016.
Retrieved January 11, 2016, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130628195308-4802093-google-
s-strategy-explained
Google: Distribution of revenue by source 2014 | Statistic. (n.d.). Retrieved January 11, 2016,
from http://www.statista.com/statistics/266471/distribution-of-googles-revenues-by-source/
THOMPSON,A. (2015, August 20). Google’s Generic Strategy & Intensive Growth Strategies.
Retrieved January 11, 2016, http://panmore.com/google-generic-strategy-intensive-growth-
strategies