DONT BE EVIL

TECH STRATEGY OVERVIEW

Overview
Google Israel: The Google Israels Company Operations Google Israels Technology Google Israels Sales Google Israels Strategy The S Curve Google Israels Benchmarking

Inside Google Israel: Tel Aviv Notice the Google-colored Mezuzah!

The Company

Google (big Google)

Highlight & History
Google is one of the leading internet technology and advertising companies in the world Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were studying at Stanford University It Specializes in Internet Search engines It currently employs 22,331 peoples Recorded revenue of $23,651.6 million in FY 2009 Primarily generates revenue by Online Advertising through Adsense Competitive advantage of Google comes from its Hardware and Software Engineering

The Company

Google Israel
Highlight, History & Main Processes
One of leading R&D centers for leading internet search engine in the world Handles many of the major functions that make Google a successful company. Engineers develop and launch key products globally while sales team finds solutions for clients advertising needs. Technology expertise enabled it to launch a number of new products and develop new processes pertaining to Search -- Google Autocomplete, Live Results, Google Instant Analytics -- Google Insights for Search, Google Trends, Website Optimizer, Google Chart Tools, In-Page Analytics, Google Analytics Applications -- got the wrong bob, Gmail Priority Inbox

The Company
Market Overview
Tech R&D centers in Israel
Numerous technology giants including Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel, AT&T, and Hewlett-Packard also have offices or research centers in Israel.

Content wins out, no matter the gateway

The internet is about content. Whoever has the content wins, no matter the gateway. Apple owns significant chunks of online content. Microsoft has many partnerships (Netflix on Xbox and Windows Media). But Google, starting from scratch, has won the challenge against a giant like Microsoft and against the previous search engine market leaders Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, Excite.

Some hidden players

ex. local cable companies such as

The Company SWOT Analysis Scorecard

Strengths Most frequently used search engine globally Brand equity Thriving advertising scheme Ready access to capital Opportunities Can try to influence new regulatory structure Cloud computing Can draw on MSFTs unpopularity Social Media Services Developers Conferences and Incubator eBooks Telecommunication Products Weaknesses Technology Limitations Ineffective filtering of material sparks security and privacy concerns among users Constant legal scrutiny Threats Economic crisis worldwide No real hardware expertise Apple Micro-blogging Yahoo, Bing and other small players in the market

The Company
Main Products BCG Model

Most Web 2.0 Acquisitions

Gmail Google Docs YouTube

Social media services (ex. Google Buzz) Google Video

Search/Ad Business (Adsense)

Key Performance Indicators

User Satisfaction with Search
As measured by customer satisfaction surveys, R&D search experiments A/O 2012, Google has 200MM searches/day 57% of the current market, followed by Yahoo at 21% and MSM at just 9%.

Search Efficiency and Effectiveness

Mobile Computing Technology Use

Android Activity Worldwide 190MM Android users and growing by the dayOver 500K Android devices activated daily

Total Advertising Revenues

Revenue increased by about $7B/year over the past 3 years without compromising users needs, Google Website Revenues, Google Network Website Revenue
Went from 9% in 2009 to 25% in 4th quarter of 2011

Total Overall Revenue

KPI -- Efficiency

Courtesy of Yossi Matias and R&D Team, Google Israel

Key Performance Indicators

Explanation of experiment

Courtesy of Yossi Matias and R&D Team, Google Israel

Technology
Overview
Highly diversified portfolio R&D Products and solutions are to developers and consumers: Easy to use Provide lots of documentation Provide lots of examples Have various levels of complexity Massive scalability and storage solutions Creative algorithms in order to make one of the worlds largest networks work more effectively Helps drive the great experience users get from Google products Networking systems Google Israels R&D teams are also working extensively on networking systems, advertising systems, and complex transaction systems in consumer applications. They are leading many projects as well as working with teams globally. Research Focused on algorithms, machine learning, game theory, computer vision and data mining, but Google Israel also employs techniques from other branches of computer science. Special Projects R&D Googlers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on their own ideas.

Technology
Special Projects (Continued)
Some other Google Israel project ideas worth mentioning include:
Periodic Table The legend tells that a similar gadget at the states received 3 millions users Math Equation gadgets enter data and gets shapes diameter, area, quadratic equation etc. Time Zone gadget Currency exchange gadget Pregnancy calculator/followup/countdown gadget Movie show time gadget for seret.co.il TV listings Any major sports result gadget Flight take off and landing gadget Music hit list

Technology
History/Trends
R&D Centers in Tel Aviv/Haifa home to software engineers who want to develop the next-generation technologies and push the limits. April 2009 Google Autocomplete was created which allows users to receive suggested searches as they type within the search box on Google October 2009 Got the Wrong Bob -- Turn on "Got the wrong Bob?" and Gmail will check if you meant to include Bob Smith rather than Bob Jones based on the groups of people you email most often. Building global products and innovating on a large scale January 2011 Live Results, Google Instant Developing and launching key products globally August 2010 Gmail Priority Inbox

Technology
Future Trends
Always looking for the next great innovation
Incubator to be launched in 2012 in Israel

To make something you never thought could be better and easier to use
Google Maps with Israel Street View Advanced Computer Vision Technologies

Tech expertise and recent acquisitions provide it a right base for future growth

Technology
Interfaced Technology that may affect Tech/Products/Processes
Open Source technology products and APIs
Google Maps API, Google Data API, Google Ajax API, Google Gadget API and over 35 more APIs

Gadgets
Cross-browser compatible, utilize open-source XML databases to power Flash GUIs and JavaScript API, working with remote content: RSS feeds, text/HTML Google Instant, ex. required new technologies including new caching systems, the ability to adaptively control the rate at which we show results pages and an optimization of page-rendering JavaScript to help web browsers keep up with the rest of the system

Technology
Interfaced Technology that may affect Tech/Products/Processes (Continued)
Multi-language support Increase success in other countries Video Annotations Now used in YouTube clips Partnership with Yad Vashem Make Holocaust archive accessible and searchable to a global audience Teaching open source and web technologies at universities Supports and encourages good web technologies for developers worldwide: Open source projects taught include: Hosting open source projects on Google Code Google Summer of Code Google Gears (browser offline capabilities) Googlers contributing to OSS: Linux, subversion, GCC

The Company Strategy

Technology Strategy Trends/Changes Make the internet the new PC Reduce the PC to an old-style terminal Eliminate the need for local OS or apps put them all on the web. Offer net storage of data to eliminate the need for local hard drives, etc. Its all about the people and the culture Having smart and highly innovative individuals working in small teams in a startup-like environment to tackle the most exciting technological challenges The engineers and scientists at Google Labs develop innovative technologies that have high impact on many people world-wide Collaboration is key to developing next-generation technologies and pushing the limits Building global products and innovating on a large scale

The Company Strategy

Technology Strategy Trends/Changes (Continued)
Organize information from around the world and it make universally accessible and useful
Ex. Google Toolbar, Google Chrome, and Gmail, all of which are inexpensive, straightforward and continuously updated.

Self-service delivery model

AdWords and AdSense -- enabling company to establish a customer relationship with over 160,000 advertisers worldwide

The Company Strategy

Tech Successes
Dead Sea Scrolls
Enabled them to be accessible online

Tech Failures
Adwords Lawsuit
Tel Aviv Court ruled that Google had effectively allowed a doctors competitors to hijack his reputation for their benefit

Yad Vashem
Online photo archive

Social Media Services

Entry sparked by ad revenues slowing Facebook and Twitter venerable market leaders Google + is their 4th attempt at entering the social media market

Google Live Results Google Insights for Search

Lack of Integration
Too many products feel like disparate standalone entities Ex. Contact and Profiles are not even from the same data source.

Operations
Core Proficiencies
Google Search Teams in Haifa/Tel-Aviv advancing the Search experience for users worldwide Devote more engineering time to search than to any other product Research and Development Develop innovative technologies that have global impact Highly talented leadership team and work force Focus on hiring highest quality individuals Culture emphasizes teamwork, flexibility, transparency, and innovation. Organic structure Aggressive and non-discriminatory hiring policy favors ability over experience

Operations
Outsourcing Technologies that are not their core proficiency
Quiksee
Israeli startup that allows users to create location-based interactive media content.

LabPixies
A leading developer of personalized web gadgets "widgets" including iGoogle, Android and the iPhone.

Google Gadgets
May be outsourced to independent contractors and contracting groups, professional developers who write gadgets for a living, teenagers and hobbyists writing gadgets because theyre fun

Networking systems, advertising systems, and complex transaction systems in consumer applications
Could be outsourced so R&D teams can devote more attention to developing Search capabilities

Operations
Partnerships
Mergers and acquisitions with other related businesses Allows Google to quickly adopt new technologies and process rather than trying to develop them internally Academic research centers and universities Collaborate on the development of technological commerce technologies Red Bend software (Israel) Mobile software management Other incubator-like initiatives worldwide Red Hat (Israel) UpWest Labs (Silicon Valley) Genesis Partners -- The Junction (Israel)

Operations
Customer Expectations; Current & Future Trends
Continue to introduce products that customers will use, are interesting and cool Continue to be innovative
Innovator of the Business Model to deliver great new products basically for free, enticing and luring million of users worldwide, with the result of building the Brand in an outstanding, quite unbelievable way - and did it extremely fast.

Continue to deliver products that make customers lives more efficient Platform is ready and easy for developers to learn

Operations
IT Main Processes/Modules
Infrastructure Solutions unique to Google
MapReduce System
Converted search indexing systems to MapReduce system in 2003, and currently processes over 20 petabytes of raw web data per day

Google File System (The GFS)

Distributed file system designed to provide efficient, reliable access to data using large clusters of commodity hardware codenamed Colossus

BigTable
Database built on GFS

Operations
Challenges
Many acquisitions of companies at different stages of their development
Integration into culture

Change Implementation

Sales
Customer Analysis/Forecast Sources User-powered Services
Googles content offerings consist of what its users supply (ex. YouTube) Google Network members
Expanding its presence in Israel, which would enable it to strengthen its leadership position

Forecast sources
Goal: To maximize eyeballs to Googles search engine and ad machines
Growing online ad spending would have a positive impact on the financial performance of the company

R&D experiments on predictability of search trends

Mean absolute prediction error, max absolute

Forecast Sources
Seasonality and Deviation Experiment

Courtesy of Yossi Matias and R&D Team, Google Israel

Forecast Sources
Customer Analysis

Courtesy of Yossi Matias and R&D Team, Google Israel

The S Curve
New technologies, approaches, and business models New technologies, emerge to approaches, and business be the "the next new models that could be the "the thing trigger a next newS thing" triggers a new curve new Sthat will the will overtake curve overtake that old one. the old one (YouTube, Google

Google Autocomplete Gmail Priority Inbox Google Buzz Google Video

Instant, Live Results, Open Source Technologies, etc.)

The S Curve
Technology Limits
Government regulations which could limit Googles technology Has run into conflict with regulatory agencies in the past Willing to influence government to set regulations beneficial to Google Creating lobbying effort and attempting to influence govt Privacy and complexity Byproducts of the engineering-centric culture Can't always predict how users will react to products and services
Ex. Google Buzz tested internally and everyone liked it, so they just had no idea it would cause the fear it did.

Enterprise growth limits Stakeholders fail to cooperate for the greater good

Benchmarking
Internal
Where are we now vs. where do we want to be?
Google Instant, Autocomplete

Who is doing what?/who is capable of doing what?/Do we need any extra personnel?

People/Culture
Management/HR Practices
Hire and retain excellent employees, measured by employee turn-over, job vacancies, customer satisfaction

Interoffice Culture Comparisons

Systems (Google vs. Blackle) Healthy financial indicators
Cost efficiency, Quality, Service, Technology, Market segments/performance

Benchmarking
Competitive
Non-core Niche product/service Track the number of competitors entering and/or leaving the niche. Gmail, Maps Is the cost of entry into the market high or low? Google+ social media service Biggest attempt to rival Facebook which has over 800 million users Market leader or follower or challenger, and what is your relative market position and why? Are you able to support that position if under 'attack'? Chrome, Android; Yahoo, Bing, etc. Telecom Number of new customers per year Android Number of lost customers per year

Benchmarking
Functional
80/20 rule
R&D Googlers encouraged to spend 20% of their time on own ideas. Concept was adopted from 3Ms Organizational Innovation concept among other similar ones.
Developed in order to stay ahead of competition by continuing to be innovative.

Benchmarking
Generic
Google Plus Art
Creates visual appeal Makes search fun!

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References
http://www.google.co.il/jobs/ http://www.fastcompany.com/1699742/google-israel-yossi-matias http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000697285&fid=1725 http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/11/15/israeli-start-ups-now-have-google-to-incubate-ideas/ http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149797#.TzJtZcVSSuo https://sites.google.com/site/haifardcenteropenhouse/about-the-r-d-center (includes video) http://www.israel21c.org/technology/google-to-incubate-israeli-startups http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4147682,00.html http://www.t3technion.com/2011/11/google-search-for-innovation-result.html http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/147805#.TzJtbsVSSuo http://searchengineland.com/my-friendly-meet-up-with-google-israel-16723 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152100#.TzJtecVSSuo http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000696872 http://www.broadstuff.com/archives/2108-Google-from-a-digital-strategists-point-of-view.html http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/01/google-mapreduce-stats.html http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/147064#.TzJtdMVSSuo http://research.google.com/archive/google_trends_predictability.pdf http://www.pcworld.com/article/146101/top_10_google_flubs_flops_and_failures.html http://ishitech.co.il/0406ar4.htm http://www.physorg.com/news11268.html http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148356#.TzJtacVSSuo http://www.chiefmartec.com/2008/04/a-new-s-curve-f.html