Google: Past, Present And FutureEssay Preview: Google: Past, Present And FutureReport this essayGoogle is best known simply for their widely used search engine. However, this company has become an industry leader, a technological innovator and much, much more. Today, Google is a publicly held corporation whose stock trades for nearly $500 per share and has a market capitalization of nearly $150 billion (Mills, Nov. 2006). That, coupled with their increasing market share in numerous web-based market, means Google truly is the little search engine that could.
Located in Mountain View, CA, the Google corporation was begun as a simple research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin during their studies at Stanford in early 1996. While attending classes, Page theorized that a search engine that could analyze the relationships between websites, rather than searching meta data or keyword appearances, would be able to produce better results than those using existing technologies. He was certainly on to something. Today, with more than 9,000 employees and more than 200 million search requests per day, Google has become the worlds largest and most used search engine, far outpacing its contemporaries such as Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.
With nearly 60% of search terms displaying ads and click-through rates around 12%, more than 10 times that of average banner ads, Google is dominating the search-term based advertising market. (McHugh, 2004) In fact, AdWords was such a huge success that Google began offering a way for other websites to display these ads as well. The new program, called AdSense, allows any website to act as an ad host for AdWords advertisements. When a user clicks on one of these ads, Google pays a portion of the price bid by the advertiser to the websites owner, thus allowing Google to host ads on virtually any website.
Google continues to evolve. Today, Google is a blogger site, a desktop search engine, an email client, a mapping directory, an online photo manager and organizer, a VoIP service, and a 3D sketcher. It is even a verb which was recently added to both The Oxford English Dictionary as well as the Merriam Webster Dictionary with the meaning, “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the World Wide Web” (
Googles expansion into these new markets began in 2001 with the acquisition of several small web-based companies including Pyra Labs, creators of “Blogger”, a web log host, and more recently, YouTube, a free video sharing website. Googles innovations have not only come from acquisitions and mergers; in fact, most of their most popular products were built in-house. Google allows its engineers to spend up to 20% of their time working on projects that interest them and has led to the development of such well-known services as Gmail, Froogle, Orkut, Google Maps, and Search by Location. By allowing such freedoms, Google is able to keep a fresh supply of new products and services to offer to its users and has actually been responsible for nearly half of all new product launches. Google also provides Google Labs, a website that allows users to beta test their new products before they are put into production. Currently they have twenty items available for testing, ranging from Google Reader, a web-based feed reader to keep track of your favorite web sites, to Google Mars which allows users to view detailed maps of Mars.
There are several success factors that Google has to consider when designing a new service or product. To begin with, for websites like Froogle, Google must make sure that wide selections of products are listed from a variety of distributors. By doing so, they offer the users the ability to find the product they are looking for at the best price available and allow them to discern which store offers the best value. With features such as seller rating and filter searches based on numerous criteria, such as manufacturers, price, and stores, they provide relevant data that is easy to decipher. They must also provide this information quickly, efficiently and securely and have up to date data.
One of Googles most recent and bold initiatives was the creation of Google Checkout, a streamlined, safe and convenient online payment processing service aimed towards simplifying the online payment process for retailers and purchasers. By using this service, users can store their credit card and shipping information in their Google account and use it to make and track purchases at participating stores. Online retailers are able to integrate Google Checkout into their existing websites as an alternative payment processing method to existing checkout and credit card processing systems. Merchants who use this new system pay a processing and transaction fee for every purchase; however, these fees are less than those normally charged by credit card companies. As an incentive to these retailers, and also a way to further increase their advertising
In December a new mobile application, Google Play News, launched to support the growth of news aggregators across the mobile web, through the Google+ app. As part of the Play News app, Google Play News, Google+ Messenger, and Google Docs can all be used to communicate directly with one another. The Play News app also supports the popular Google Translate and Google Hangouts apps, which enable consumers to exchange stories and other news between Google+ users and content they see from various apps, platforms and services on the web. The Play News app also enables developers to integrate the mobile app into their websites to add an add-on for mobile websites to use with Google Now services. An example of this integration is provided with Android Pay for Google.
“Google is ready to join the digital revolution of the web, enabling the expansion of the web to its new customers. For consumers, the Google Experience is the greatest value-saver and they can find something exciting, exciting, exciting to do that Google Play, which is the platform they need for business, is a great starting point for them for both growing their business and supporting social media. Even better, using the Google+ Experience would be a good use for their Google Apps”, said Scott Broussard
“By integrating the Play News app with our Google Play store experience, a new opportunity for us to help consumers make informed decisions for their online shopping experience, including ensuring that the content displayed on Google+ is the best available. This is particularly helpful for consumers who are on a tight budget, such as people making phone calls and shopping in a store. We want to enhance the Google Experience experience for your business, while making our experience more understandable for your individual customers,” said Tim Denton.
About Google Play
Play is a powerful and intuitive web platform developed by Google that simplifies online shopping with a wealth of useful information, and an unmatched collection of services and resources. Based in Santa Clara, California, Play is an internationally recognized leader in the mobile web. Play has been awarded a Silver Award for Excellence in Consumer Electronics and Digital Imaging and is the second-largest mobile video business in the world with over 1,000 mobile video apps, providing Google a rich and stable platform to drive digital video and business creation. Play continues to expand its digital presence with the launch and growth of Play Music. By providing more powerful music players to its customers, Google Play Music continues to be the new voice search for new experiences. With Play, Google is introducing Google Plus to the wider media business with the mobile app to facilitate a new generation of YouTube-savvy users (and publishers). Google Play Music was named Number One on the Best Music App in 2008. Google Music is the #4 most popular music streaming service among people aged 16 to 59 (for the first time, the company ranked #1 for the first time). To celebrate this milestone, Google launched the Play Music App at the beginning of September. It now features more than 15 million song downloads across 40 million songs sold in the U.S., while providing fans with the most up-to-date music streaming ecosystem ever. Google+ is now available to over 2.5 million people in the U.S. and Canada. Google Play Music is a popular option for those looking to discover new content and to browse for original music collections and collections.