Google is one of the largest corporations in the world.

Their innovative products and amazing web search engine have helped them create a massive entity and placed them as the most recognizable company in the world and whose brand equity tops all corporations. Their web presence exceeds those of its competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo, and they continue showing the innovation that has led them to become the worlds most recognizable company. Google began in 1996 as a project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who were both studying at Stanford University California. While working on their research project they came up with a plan to make a search engine that would rank websites according to the number of other websites that were linked to that site. The domain google.com was registered on September 14th, 1997 and Google Corporation was formed a year later in September 1998. In 2000 Google introduced its Adwords/Adsense software. Advertisements used a system based on the pretence that you only paid for your advertising if your ad link was clicked. This created Pay Per Click. In 2001, PageRank was patented. Also in 2001 co-founder Larry Page stepped down as the CEO of Google and former CEO of Novel. Eric Schmidt was appointed the new CEO of Google. Google moved its offices to its large Google estate (nicknamed GooglePlex) in Mountainview California in 2003, where it is still based. Gmail was introduced in 2004. This is a free web-based email service. It became the rival of Yahoo mail and Microsoft hotmail. In 2004, Google introduced Google Earth. This is an interactive globe of the world which allows you to type in any location and it will take you there, giving you the ability to zoom in to the specific area. In September of 2005, Google became partners with NASA allowing them to create Google Mars and Google Moon. These were two Google map applications built based on pictures of the moon and the planet Mars. Google Video was launched in 2006 along with Goggle Docs,

Google Checkout, Google News, and the Google custom search engine. In 2007, Google announced a partnership with China Mobile, Chinas largest mobile telecom carrier. Google also announced a partnership with Salesforce.com, which combined their companies on- demand CRM applications with Adwords. The acquisition of Postini also occurred in 2007. In late 2007, Google partnered with many publishers to make their digitalized magazine articles available on Google Book Search. Google introduced the T-Mobile G1 and the accompanying operating system Android in 2008. The deal to acquire On2 Technologies began in 2008 and acquisition for Double Click was finalized. The YouTube Partnership was also expanded to include individual popular videos. There are different ways of organizing and accessing information, and searching the internet is one of the best for retrieving information. Google, the worlds largest search engine is a free easy-to-use service that returns results in a fraction of a second. Google was built on the concept of organizing the worlds information and making it accessible to all. Because of their low cost provider strategy, every single one of their products is offered to the average customer for free or little charge. In order to do this they must make their profit in advertising dollars. In other words, their free services include advertisements from companies that decide to pay them to get their brand in front of you when you are surfing the web, checking your e-mail, making a shopping list, reading the news, or any other activity that you may be doing on the Internet. Since Google has the largest market share, their search engine can effectively learn more quickly than competitors products. With each search Google refines its results so that the search engine gets smarter and caters to peoples individual preferences. Google takes time to collect the data that provides quality results and even more time to analyze the content and users reactions to the results. A competitor could not replicate Googles search results without going through a

long process of refinement. Google has used its analytics tools to help understand the social complexity of the meaning of keywords to a specific group of users. Google consistently delivers relevant results at blazing speeds with minimal hassle. To maintain their competitive advantage, they have developed an infrastructure that guarantees a fast and efficient search engine, as well as branching out their efforts in other directions beyond search. Throughout it life cycle, Google has made many acquisitions and has created many strategic alliances as well as partnerships. Their acquisitions include, but not limited to are Pyra Labs, Keyhole, Writely, Double Click, and YouTube. All of these have had a major impact on the product and services that Google has been able to provide. By expanding their strategic alliance with AOL, they were able to create a global online advertising partnership, making more of AOLs content available to Google users. This strategic alliance expanded the relationship between the two companies. Another major strategic alliance that Google made was with Sony. This alliance enabled Google to draw on Sonys technologies, renowned engineering quality, and groundbreaking design and diverse product to gain a comprehensive platform to help the adoption of the Android OS . By doing a S.W.O.T analysis we are able to determine their strengths, weakness, opportunities, and current threats. To look at each of them carefully, it is important to distinguish that strengths and weaknesses are sources that affect the companys internal environment and opportunities and threats are factors in the external environment that can affect an organization. Google has developed a competitive advantage in the success of brand equity. Google has been able to distinguish its services from all others and has gained a high awareness, perceived quality, and brand loyalty through its branding, which continues to make it the most frequently used search engine.

Google Inc. remains profitable, even in times of an economic slowdown. Google started with

search-based advertising and has expanded into extensive data mining of millions of search patterns and user profiles. They have made many smart acquisitions as noted above allowing them to keep a strong financial standing in the market. Googles advertising program, AdWords, enables businesses to display their products and services as links that appear in search results relevant to the consumers search. Businesses are then only required to pay if their ads are clicked on.

Along with strengths, also come weaknesses. They have had lawsuits ranging from privacy violations to improper use of company names through search engines. Googles technology compromises the privacy of users through its Gmail application. Users of Gmail do not have the ability to permanently delete messages. Google also has an online feature that enables users of its on line search engine to see all of their past search requests and results, thus also compromising privacy. This has cost Google many customers.

Google monopolizes its status by renovating its current position through adaptation, advancement and taking advantage of opportunities. External factors in the communications industry have a direct impact on sustaining a competitive advantage . Google Plus would be a great spot to combine all of Googles services, making it the best social networking and internet search tool available. Google has successfully become known as the go-to place for almost anything on the web. Stores could also benefit by using Google Latitude, Google Maps and Google Shopping. Google Shopping could have an interface that would link to Google Offers to show coupon deals available for certain products.

Competition is will always be a constant threat for Google. Google is targeted by competition in its search business, social networking business and application business by the biggest names in technology; Oracle, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple. Additionally, smaller, emerging start-ups could

innovate quicker and provide services quicker than Google. Google also depends on portals like AOL, and if those contracts were terminated, Google could lose a considerable share of its revenue.

MSN has also begun creating a new operating system, called "Longhorn" which would have an implicit query feature. Longhorn search will be able to search the web, blogs, news sources, hard drive files, emails and attachments all from a keyword search without a browser. Users would be able to search directly from already established Microsoft programs.

The increase in mobile devices and decrease in personal computers could negatively affect search revenues for Google. Smaller screen resolution can create problems in viewing advertisements and if Google cannot provide an attractive environment for advertisements, the value of their services could decline. Apples Siri and similar programs that may develop in the future also have the potential to eliminate the need for internet browser based search engines, thus negatively affecting Googles revenues.

One of the recommendations I would have for Google would be to reposition itself and align itself with the original idea that information should flow freely. But, they need to understand that freedom also means people can freely choose not to participate in that flow. Information and technology change clearly outpaces the ability of individuals to comprehend what the changes mean and how they can be affected.

Another possibility would be for Google and Microsoft to form a partnership to provide the

cloud computing application. The combination of these two companies would be phenomenal. If they were to combine their efforts, it would be easy for them to dominate the market. Google has

the advantage that every day billions of people use their web-page and applications and Microsoft has the most well known software in the world thus creating a fierce competitive advantage. Googles ability to adapt to the market, their management work ethic, their philosophy, and their aggressive stance in terms of acquiring business has made them the successful business that they are today