Branding Management Assignment on : Google

Serial No. Content Page No.

1. Acknowledgement 4

2. Introduction 5-6

3. Google timeline 7

4. Timeline in detail 8-52

5. Management Team:

-Executive Officers

-Senior Leaders

-Board of Directors

53-64

6. Organizational Structure 64-66

7. Brand Portfolio 67-70

8. Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning 71-76

9. Market Analysis 77-78

10. Market Scenario:

-Why Google is trying to change the mobile world?

-Why Google is buying satellites?

-Internet infrastructure is Google’s infrastructure?

78-81

11. Cost Benefit and Pricing analysis of Google :

-Google Apps

-Fiber Network

-Data store operation

82-84

12. The hidden cost of Google apps

(a consumer’s perspective)

86-87

13. The identity tangle 88-91

14. Competitors’ analysis: 92-93

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-Why does Microsoft fear Google?

-How Google wants to compete with Facebook?

15. How does Google buy traffic? 94

16. Why did Google acquire Doubleclick? 95

17. Why doesn’t monetarize all its services? 96

18. How Google capitalize on open source developer’s

work?

97

19. How did Google capture the online ad market? 97

20. How did Google explore the offline market? 98

21. Predicting the Future (conclusion) 99-101

Acknowledgement

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It is to my immense pleasure to express my heartiest gratitude towards

my branding professor Mr. Sri Ram Rajann for his splendid shore up

during all the sessions of branding class and for his magnificent

feedback which improved us, and for his fantastic patience and

friendliness with students.

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Introduction

Google has become an integral part of our lives and the word has even become a

verb as Google are often heard to say let’s “Google” that. I have even heard the

Web giant referred to in hushed tones during heated discussions and when a

controversial fact or figure is being debated across a dinner table or at the local bar

as to whether it is true or false and a person will pull out their iPhone and say “let’s

check Lord Google”.

Google was founded in 1997 by two Stanford University PhD students Larry Page

and Sergey Brin whose initial company mission statement was

“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and

useful”

Which they seem to have made a good dent in achieving since they started the

company?

Technology is enhancing us as human beings and the integrating of artificial

intelligence is slowly being weaved and embedded into our activities and habits

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almost without us noticing. This reliance that is permeating our day to day

existence even extends to a reported 60% plus of all buying decisions now starting

with a Google search as Google start our research online rather than walk the shop

aisles and asking sales attendants questions.

It’s been barely 13 years since conception but the search company whose

slogan is “Don’t be evil”  (reputed to have been coined by the Google engineer

Paul Buchheit in 2006 ) has now struck out into other technology areas

beyond their core search business such as:

The successful Android mobile operating system which is reporting 400,000

activations per day (April 2011).

Picasa photo organization.

Google ‘Earth’ the 3D view of the earth technology that was initially the

start up Keyhole.

Google Energy that is developing and investing in renewable energy projects

such as wind farms in North Dakota.

Google Driverless Car that uses Google Street View with artificial intelligence

technology.

The law of abundance is evident here if you want a glimpse of the facts and the

staggering global statistics for Google in its search engine and associated

online properties such as YouTube, Android and other associated subsidiaries

and technologies

 Google on a timeline

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Google Timeline in detail

1995-1997

1995 Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 22, a U

Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about almost everything during this first meeting.

1996 Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students,

begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.

BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year—eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.

1997 Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a

new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google—a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the Web.

1998

August Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to

an entity that doesn’t exist yet: a company called Google Inc.

September Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa

Margarita, Menlo Park.

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Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company’s name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim’s check.

Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he’s a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

December “PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for

returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

1999

February Google outgrow its garage office and move to new digs at 165

University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees.

April Yoshka, our first “company” dog, comes to work with its senior

vice president of operations, Urs Hoelzle.

May Omid Kordestani joins to run sales—the first non-engineering hires.

June Google’s first press release announces a $25 million round from

Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing “Googlers” as” people who use Google”.

August Google move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bay

shore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose.

November

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Charlie Ayers joins as Google’s first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged by the company’s 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for the Grateful Dead.

2000

April On April Fools’ Day, Google announce the MentalPlex: Google’s

ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes.

May The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French,

German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.

Google won its first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples’ Voice (voted by users).

June Google forges a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default

search provider.

Google announces the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world’s largest search engine.

September Google started offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean,

bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.

October Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad

program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

December Google Toolbar is released. It’s a browser plug-in that makes it

possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

2001

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January Google announced the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing

as our first VP of engineering operations.

February Google’s first public acquisition: Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion

Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. Google add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.

March Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.

Google.com is available in 26 languages.

April Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.

July Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.

August Google opened their first international office, in Tokyo.

Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.

October A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the

major search service for millions of Latin Americans.

December Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion Web documents.

2002

February Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.

The first Google hardware is released: it’s a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.

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Google release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.

April For April Fools’ Day, Google announce that pigeons power our

search results.

Google release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion Web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.

May Google announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google

search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.

Google release Google Labs, a place to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.

September Google News launches with 4000 news sources.

October Google opened its first Australian office in Sydney.

December Users could now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later

called Google Product Search).

2003

January American Dialect Society members vote “Google” the “most

useful” Word of the Year for 2002.

February Google acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.

March

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Google announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google’s vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, Google acquire Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)

April Google launch Google Grants, our in-kind advertising program for

nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.

October Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and

recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

December Google launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book

Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.

2004

January Orkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social

networking.

February Larry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.

Our search index hits a new milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion Google pages and 880 million images.

March Google move to our new “Googolplex” at 1600 Amphitheatre

Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment.

Google formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard as general manager; reporters begin reporting in April about our vision for the enterprise search business.

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Google introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)

April For April Fools’ Google announce plans to open the Googlunaplex,

a new research facility on the Moon.

May Google announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg

Scholarship, awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today these scholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.

August Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A

common stock takes place on Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.

September There are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are

#102 and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.

October Google formally open our office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150

multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney.

Google SMS (short message service) launches; send your text search queries to GOOGLE or 466453 on your mobile device.

Larry and Sergey are named Fellows by the Marconi Society, which recognizes “lasting scientific contributions to human progress in the field of communications science and the Internet.”

Google spotlight our new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit from Sergey and Larry.

Google Desktop Search is introduced: You can now search for files and documents stored on your hard drive using Google technology.

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Google launch the beta version of Google Scholar, a free service for searching scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.

Google acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.

November Our index of Web pages reaches 8 billion.

December Google open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center to

attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers.

The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan and Oxford as well as the New York Public Library.

2005

February Google hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed.

Google Maps goes live.

March Google launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-

oriented resources, including all of our APIs.

Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore.

Google acquire Urchin, a Google analytics company whose technology is used to create Google Analytics.

April Our first Google Maps release in Europe is for the U.K.

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For April Fools’, Google announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results.

Google Maps now features satellite views and directions.

Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions.

My Search History launches in Labs, allowing you to view all the Google pages you’ve visited and Google searches you’ve made over time.

Google release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.

May Google release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their

mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs.

Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: Searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries.

Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.

June Google hold our first Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million

program that aims to help computer science students contribute to open source software development.

Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.

Google unveil Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search.

Google release Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history will closely reflect your interests.

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API for Maps released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.

August Google scores well in the U.S. government’s 2005 machine

translation evaluation. (Google has done so in subsequent years as well.)

Google launch Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables you to talk or IM with friends quickly and easily, as Google as talk using a computer microphone and speaker (no phone required) for free.

September Overlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastation wrought by

Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims.

DARPA veteran Vint Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in China.

Google Blog Search goes live; it’s the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.

October Feed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader,

is introduced at the web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book event with Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point.” Since then, the Authors@Google program has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe and India.

November Google release Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for

measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns.

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Google announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.

December Google Transit launches in Labs. People in the Portland, Oregon

metro area can now plan their trips on public transportation at one site.

Gmail for mobile launches in the United States.

2006

January Our first Code Jam in China concludes in Beijing. The winner,

graduate student Chuan Xu, is one of more than 13,000 registrants.

Google announce the acquisition of dMarc, a digital radio advertising company.

Google.cn, a local domain version of Google, goes live in China.

Google introduce Picasa in 25 more languages, including Polish, Thai and Vietnamese.

February Google release Chat in Gmail, using the instant messaging tools

from Google Talk.

Eric Schmidt is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Larry Brilliant becomes the executive director of Google.org, our philanthropic arm.

Google News for mobile launches.

March Google announce the acquisition of Writely, a Web-based word

processing application that subsequently becomes the basis for Google Docs.

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A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial information.

April For April Fools’ Google unveil a new product, Google Romance:

“Dating is a search problem.”

Google launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.

Google release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

May Google release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of

searches over time.

June Google announce Picasa web Albums, allowing you to upload and

share your photos online.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds “Google” as a verb.

Google announce Google Checkout, a fast and easy way to pay for online purchases.

Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.

Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.

July At Google Code Jam Europe, nearly 10,000 programmers from 31

countries compete at Google Dublin for the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the final round.

August Google launch free citywide Wi-Fi in Mountain View.

More than 100 libraries on 10 campuses of the University of California join the Google Books Library Project.

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Star Trek’s 40th Anniversary Convention in Las Vegas features a Google booth showcasing tools appropriate for intergalactic use.

Apps for Your Domain, a suite of applications designed for organizations of all sizes, and including Gmail and Calendar, is released.

Google Book Search begins offering free PDF downloads of books in the public domain.

September Google add an archive search to Google News, with more than 200

years of historical articles.

Featured Content for Google Earth includes overlays from the UN Environmental Program, Discovery Networks, the Jane Good all Institute and the National Park Service.

The University Complutense of Madrid becomes the first Spanish-language library to join the Google Books Library Project.

October Together with Lit Cam and UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong

Learning, Google launch the Literacy Project, offering resources for teachers, literacy groups and anyone interested in reading promotion.

Google announce our acquisition of YouTube.

Google release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets: Word processor Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March).

Google Custom Search Engine launches, giving bloggers and website owners the ability to create a search engine tailored to their own interests.

Google acquire JotSpot, a collaborative wiki platform, which later becomes Google Sites.

November The first nationwide Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.K. takes

place with the theme My Britain. More than 15,000 kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is chosen to have her

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doodle displayed on www.google.co.uk. There have been Doodle 4 Google contests in several other years and countries since.

December Google release Patent Search in the U.S., indexing more than 7

million patents dating back to 1790.

2007

January Google announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world’s

largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.

February Google release Google Maps in Australia, complete with local

business results and mobile capability.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is available in eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian.

For Valentine’s Day, Google open up Gmail to everyone. (Previously, it was available by invitation only.)

Google Apps Premier Edition launches, bringing cloud computing to businesses.

The Candidates@Google series kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several 2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, to visit the Googolplex.

Google introduce traffic information to Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the U.S.

March Our first Latin American software coding contest ends with Fabio

Dias Moreira of Brazil taking the grand prize. He scored more points than 5,000 other programmers from all over the continent.

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Google sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda.

April This April Fools’ Day is extra busy: not only do Google introduce

the Gmail Paper Archive and TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider)—Google lose (and find) a real snake in our New York office!

Google add eight more languages to Blogger, bringing the total to 19.

May In partnership with the Growing Connection, Google plant a

vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings.

Google move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Governor Jennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords support site.

At our Searchology event, Google announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.

Google Hot Trends launches, listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are searching for at the moment.

Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.

On Developer Day, Google announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology for creating offline web applications.

June Google Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone.

YouTube becomes available in nine more domains: Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland and the U.K.

Google announce a partnership with Salesforce.com, combining that company’s on-demand CRM applications with AdWords.

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Google unveil several “green” initiatives: RechargeIT, aimed at accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the completion of our installation of solar panels at the Googolplex, in Mountain View, and our intention to be completely carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. Google also announce the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, in collaboration with Intel, Dell and more than 30 other companies.

Google Earth Outreach is introduced, designed to help nonprofit organizations use Google Earth to advocate their causes.

July Google announce the acquisition of Postini.

The first CNN/YouTube debate takes place between the eight U.S. Democratic Presidential candidates. (The Republicans get their turn in November 2007.)

Google Finance becomes available for non-U.S. markets for the first time, in Canada.

Google Apps is now available in 28 languages.

August Google ask users for their interpretation of how Gmail

travels around the world, and receive more than 1,100 video responses from more than 65 different countries.

To infinity and beyond! Sky launches inside Google Earth, including layers for constellation information and virtual tours of galaxies.

September AdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for

mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard Websites.

Together with the X PRIZE Foundation Google announce the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse.

Google add presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs.

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Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

October Google partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that

students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.

November Google announce Open Social, a set of common APIs for

developers to build applications for social networks.

Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, Google introduce the $10 million Android Developer Challenge.

Google.org announces RE<C, an initiative designed to create electricity from renewable sources that are cheaper than coal. The initial focus is on support for solar thermal power and wind power technologies.

December The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube.

She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.

2008

January Google.org announces five key initiatives: in addition to the

previously-announced RE<C and RechargeIT, there is a new dedication to solutions that can predict and prevent crises worldwide, improve public services and fuel the growth of small enterprises.

Google bid in the 700 MHz spectrum auction to ensure that a more open wireless world becomes available to consumers.

February

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For people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, Google introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query.

Google Sites, a revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts. Sites enable you to create collaborative websites with embedded videos, documents and calendars.

March Google finally complete the acquisition deal for Double-click.

Together with Yahoo and MySpace, Google announce the Open Social Foundation, an independent non-profit group designed to provide transparency and operational guidelines around the open software tools for social computing.

April Google feature 16 April Fools’ jokes from our offices around the

world, including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense for Conversations, a Manpower Search (China) and the Google Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to YouTube-featured videos are “Rick rolled.”

A new version of Google Earth launches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At the same time, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospatial Consortium standard.

Google Websites Optimizer comes out of beta, expanding from an AdWords-only product. It’s a free Websites-testing tool with which site owners can continually test different combinations of their Websites content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.

Google launch Google Finance China allowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as a result of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams.

Google introduce a collection of 70+ new themes (“skins”) for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and designers as Dale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe Starck.

May

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Following both the Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts.

Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1.

At a developer event, Google preview Google Friend Connect, a set of functions and applications enabling Websites owners to easily make their sites social by adding registration, invitations, member’s gallery, message posting and reviews, plus applications built by the Open Social developer community.

With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) running low, Google search becomes available over IPv6, a new IP address space large enough to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf is a key proponent of broad and immediate adoption of IPv6.

Google Translate adds 10 more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23.

Google release Google Health to the public, allowing people to safely and securely collect, store and manage their medical records and health information online.

Google introduce a series of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on the Official Google Blog.

California 6th grader Grace Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle “Up in the Clouds.”

June Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time.

With the launch of Google Site Search, site owners can enable Google-powered searches on their own Websites.

Google launch Gmail Labs, a set of experimental Gmail features, including saved searches and different kinds of stars, which let you customize your Gmail experience.

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A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide.

For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.

July Google provide Street View for the entire 2008 Tour de France

route—the first launch of Street View imagery in Europe.

Our first downloadable iPhone app, featuring My Location and word suggestions for quicker mobile searching, debuts with the launch of the Apple 3G iPhone.

Google work with the band Radiohead to make a music video of their song “House of Cards,” using only data, and not cameras.

Our indexing system for processing links indicates that Google now count 1 trillion unique URLs (and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day).

August Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia—

the first time it’s appeared outside of North America or Europe.

Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and reduce keystrokes.

Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, Google launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.

September Word gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule when

the comic book that introduces our new open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1. The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day later.

Google get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.

Google release an upgrade for Picasa, including new editing tools, a movie maker and easier syncing with the Web. At the same

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time, Picasa Web Albums is updated with a new feature allowing you to ”name tag” people in photos.

Google News Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.

T-Mobile announces the G1, the first phone built on the Android operating system. At the same time, Google release a new Android Software Developer Kit, and the Open Handset Alliance announces its intention to open source the entire Android platform by the end of 2008. The G1 becomes available for purchase in October.

Google launch Transit for the New York metro region, making public transit information easily available for users of the largest transportation agency in the U.S.

Thanks to all of you, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.

October Google release the first draft of Clean Energy 2030, a proposal to

wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity use and to reduce oil use by cars 40 percent by 2030. The plan could generate billions in savings as well as millions of “green jobs.”

Google introduce Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch, complete with photos, geo-located Wikipedia articles and the ability to tilt your phone to view 3D terrain.

Googlers in Mountain View build a zip line to travel across the small Permanente Creek separating a few of our buildings.

November In a vote by 5-0, the FCC formally agrees to open up “white

spaces,” or unused television spectrum, for wireless broadband service. Google see this decision as a clear victory for Internet users and anyone who wants good wireless communications.

After Google discover a correlation between certain search queries and CDC data on flu symptoms, Google release Google Flu Trends, an indicator of flu activity around the U.S. as much as two weeks earlier than traditional flu surveillance systems.

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Google announce the availability of the LIFE photo archive in Google Image Search. Only a fraction of the approximately 10 million photos have ever been seen before.

Search Wiki launches, a way for you to customize your own search experience by re-ranking, deleting, adding and commenting on search results. Comments can also be read by other users.

December Google invite musicians around the globe to audition to participate

in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world’s first collaborative online orchestra.

Google Friend Connect is available to any Webmaster looking to easily integrate social features into their site.

Street View coverage more than doubles in the United States, including several states never before seen on Street View (Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota).

Google partner with publishers to digitize millions of magazine articles and make them readily available on Google Book Search.

2009

January Google kick off January with the launch of Picasa for Mac at

Macworld.

The Vatican launches a YouTube Channel, providing updates from the Pope and Catholic Church.

Together with the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium and academic researchers, Google announce Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform that provides tools to test broadband connections.

February The latest version of Google Earth makes a splash with Ocean, a

new feature that provides a 3D look at the ocean floor and information about one of the world’s greatest natural resources.

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Google introduce Google Latitude, a Google Maps for mobile feature and an iGoogle gadget that lets you share your location with friends and see the approximate location of people who have decided to share their location with you.

After adding Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese and Galician, Google Translate is capable of automatic translation between 41 languages, covering 98 percent of the languages read by Internet users.

Our first message on Twitter gets back to binary: I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010. (Hint: it’s a button on our homepage.)

March Google launch a beta test of interest-based advertising on partner

sites and on YouTube. This kind of tailored advertising lets us show ads more closely related to what people are searching for, and it gives advertisers an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products or services.

Google release Google Voice to existing Grand Central users. The new application improves the way you use your phone, with features like voicemail transcription and archive and search of all of your SMS text messages.

Google celebrate our San Francisco office’s Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System. Google see it as a sign that Google is on track with our approach to building environmentally friendly offices.

The White House holds an online town hall to answer citizens’ questions submitted on Google Moderator.

Google launch new iGoogle backdrops inspired by video games, including classics like “Mario,” “Zelda” and “Donkey Kong.”

Google announce Google Ventures: a venture capital fund aimed at using our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies.

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Using our transliteration technology, Google build and release a feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type messages in Indian languages like Hindi or Malayalam.

Google Suggest goes local with keyword suggestions for 51 languages in 155 domains.

April Our April Fools’ Day prank this year is CADIE, our “Cognitive

Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity” who spends the day taking over various Google products before self-destructing.

Google announce an update to search which enables people to get localized results even if they don’t include a location in their search query.

For India’s 15th general election, Google launch the Google India Elections Centre, where people can check to see if they’re registered to vote, find their polling place, as well as read news and other information.

Over 90 musicians from around the world—including a Spanish guitarist, a Dutch harpist and a Lithuanian birbyne player—perform in the first-ever YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Google rebuild and redesign Google Labs as well as release two new Labs: Similar Image search and Google News Timeline. Later in the month, Google introduce Toolbar Labs.

Google begin to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. search pages when people search for names, giving people more control over what others find about them when they search on Google.

Google release 11 short films about Google Chrome made by Christoph Niemann, Motion Theory, Steve Mottershead, Go Robot, Open, Default Office, Hunter Gatherer, Lifelong Friendship Society, SuperFad, Jeff & Paul and Pantograph.

May

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To clear brush and reduce fire hazard in the fields near our Mountain View headquarters, Google rent some goats from a local company. They help us trim the grass the low-carbon way!

At our second Searchology event, Google introduce a few new search features, including the Search Options panel and rich snippets in search results.

Google launch Sky Map for Android, which uses your Android phone to help you identify stars, constellations and planets.

Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, wins the second U.S. Doodle 4 Google competition with her doodle “A new beginning.”

At our second annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google preview Google Wave, a new communication and collaboration tool.

June Google add a new dashboard to Google Places which gives

business owners information, such as what people searched for to see their listing or how many times their listing appeared in search results, about how customers find their businesses in Google Maps.

Google introduce two new ways to customize your iGoogle page: the iGoogle Showcase, which lets you see your favorite celebrities’ homepages look like and add gadgets and more from those pages to your own, and nature themes.

Google Squared, a new experiment in Labs intended for certain kinds of complex search queries, collects facts from the Web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet.

The Google Translator Toolkit is a new set of editing tools that helps people translate and publish work in other languages faster and at a higher quality. Our automatic translation system also learns from any corrections.

Google announce All for Good. It’s a single search interface for volunteer activities across many major volunteering sites and organizations that are developed using App Engine and Google Base. Many Googlers contributed to the open source project in their 20 percent time.

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Google release a beta version of AdSense for Mobile Applications, which allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in iPhone and Android applications.

Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications that allows people in Africa to access information—like health and agriculture tips, news and local weather—using SMS on their mobile phones, and includes a marketplace application for finding buyers and sellers of goods.

July Both the enterprise and consumer versions of Gmail, Google

Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk are now out of beta.

Google announce that we’re developing the Google Chrome OS, an open source, light weight operating system initially targeted at net books.

Google launch Moon in Google Earth on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The tool features lunar imagery, information about the Apollo landing sites, panoramic images shot by the Apollo astronauts and narrated tours.

The new comics themes for iGoogle range from classic strips like Peanuts to heroes like Batman to alternative comics from all over the world.

Google add a search options panel to Google Images, making it easier to find the types of images you need.

August Any active U.S. service member is invited to sign up for a Google

Voice account, to help them keep in better touch with family and friends, especially when deployed abroad.

Google announce a deal to acquire On2 Technologies, a high-quality video compression technology company.

New social features come to iGoogle, including social gaming, media-sharing and to-do list gadgets as well as an update feed for friends’ activities.

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Google Insights for Search is now available in 39 languages around the world. While we’re at it, Google introduce a forecasting feature and an animated map.

Google expand the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos, so you can monetize your viral video and earn revenue even if you aren’t a member of the Partnership Program.

Google add Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish to Google Translate, bringing the total number of supported languages to 51—that’s 2,550 language pairs!

September Google celebrate the birthday of a product nearly as old as Google

itself: Blogger. More than 300 million people visit the blogging site every month, and Google is proud that it continues to be a medium for people around the world to freely express themselves.

The search box on our classic homepage gets bigger.

Fast Flip, an experiment in Google Labs, lets you quickly browse through recent news, headlines and popular topics like a print magazine, while at the same time offering some of the benefits of online news, like aggregation and search over many top publications, personalization and the ability to share content with your friends.

Google acquire reCAPTCHA, a technology company focused on Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—the process that converts scanned images into plain text.

In an effort to create a more open display advertising ecosystem for everyone, Google introduce the Double-click Ad Exchange, a real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side; and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell display advertising space.

On the birthday of the “father of science fiction,” Google unveil the truth behind a mysterious series of doodles in tribute to H.G. Wells.

Google introduce Place Pages to Google Maps: one page that organizes all the relevant information about a business, point of

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interest, transit station, neighborhood, landmark or city—in any part of the world—in one place. Place Pages include rich details, like photos, videos, a Street View preview, nearby transit, reviews and related Websites.

October Google begin a series of posts on the Official Google Blog

dedicated to the latest and greatest in the world of Google search.

Flu Trends, our flu surveillance tool, is now available in 16 additional countries and in 37 languages.

Google introduce Building Maker, a tool for creating buildings for Google Earth that lets you construct a model of a building using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes.

Google announce an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.

Social Search, a new experiment on Google Labs, helps you find relevant public content from your friends and contacts right in your Google search results.

Google Maps Navigation, our turn-by-turn GPS navigation system, includes 3D views and voice guidance—and because it’s connected to the Google cloud, it always includes the newest map data, lets you search by voice or along a route, and provides live traffic data.

A new search feature helps you find music information on the Web. When you enter the name of a song, artist or album, or even a snippet of lyrics, your search results will include links to an audio preview of those songs provided by our music search partners.

November The Google Dashboard provides you with greater transparency and

control over the data associated with your Google Account.

A new series on the Official Google Blog covers what’s new in Google Apps.

Google add full-text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts to Google Scholar. Google

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think this addition will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all.

An experimental feature in Labs called Image Swirl builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface.

By combining automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system, Google offer automatic captions in YouTube. Captions can help the deaf and hearing impaired, enable people around the world to access video content through machine translation, improve search and enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they’re looking for.

A few months after announcing our open source operating system project, Google open-source the project as Chromium OS in order to engage with partners, the open source community and developers.

December A new homepage design shows only our logo, the search box and

the buttons upon first loading, and reveals other links on the homepage, such as Gmail or Image Search, when the user moves the mouse.

Google Public DNS is part of our ongoing effort to make the Web faster. A DNS resolver converts easy-to-remember domain names into unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers so that computers can communicate with one another.

With our new real-time search feature, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter, as well as news headlines and blog posts published just seconds before your search—right on the search results page.

Just in time for the holidays, Google roll out Mac and Linux versions of Google Chrome, as well as extensions for Chrome in Windows and Linux (all in beta).

Living Stories developed in partnership with The New York Times and The Washington Post is an experimental format prototype for presenting online news. (Google ended this

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experiment in February 2010 and open-sourced the code for anyone to use.)

Google introduce a few new features to Google Toolbar, including an easy way to share any page on the Web, shortened by a new URL shortened (goo.gl).

For the first time, YouTube reveals official Most-Watched lists and some of its fastest-rising search terms for the past year.

2010

January Google introduce Nexus One, an exemplar of what’s possible on

mobile devices through Android, as well as a Google-hosted Web store aimed at providing people with an easier way to buy a mobile phone.

Now, you can upload all file types, including large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and more to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online.

Google state our new approach to business in China: Google will no longer censor search results on Google.cn, and Google will work to determine how Google might operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if possible.

On International Data Privacy Day, Google publish our privacy principles. Google’ve always operated under these principles, but now codify them to share our thinking as Google create new technologies.

February The first-ever Google Super Bowl ad tells a love story through

search terms. This is one of many videos made to celebrate the human quests behind search.

In time for the Winter Games in Vancouver, Google introduce Street View imagery of Whistler Blackcomb Mountains, gathered with a special camera-equipped snowmobile.

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Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about things you find interesting—like photos, videos, WebPages or whatever might be on your mind—built into Gmail and for mobile.

Google introduce Safety Mode in YouTube, an opt-in setting to help screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don’t want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube.

Google announce a plan to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks, delivering Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, in a small number of trial locations across the United States.

Google acquire Aardvark, a company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts.

The next generation of ad-serving technology for online publishers, Double-click for Publishers and DFP Small Business, combines Google’s technology and infrastructure with Double-clicks’ display advertising and ad serving experience.

March Google acquire Picnik, a site enabling you to edit your photos in the

cloud, without leaving your browser.

Stars in search is a new feature that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite Web content.

The Google Apps Marketplace is a new online store for integrated business applications that allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps.

Bike directions and bike trail data come to Google Maps.

Following the January announcement about search in China, Google stop censoring our search services–Google Search, Google News and Google Images–on Google.cn, instead redirecting users from Google.cn to Google.com.hk.

April

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For April Fools’ Day, Google change our name to Topeka. The change is a tribute to Topeka, Kansas, which changed its name to Google as part of an effort to bring our experimental fiber network to that city.

Scientists announce a significant new hominid fossil discovery, made with help from Google Earth, in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa.

New features for real-time search include the ability to search the archive of public tweets and “replay” the conversation from a particular moment in time, as well as a tool called Google Follow Finder that helps you find new people to follow.

Google Places (formerly the Local Business Center) gets a new name along with some new features, like showing service areas and, in some cities, the ability to use an easy advertising program called Tags.

Google launch a Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal Google receive from government agencies around the world.

With Earth view in Google Maps, you can explore Google Earth’s detailed 3D imagery and terrain directly in Google Maps, on your browser.

Oregon becomes the first state to open up Google Apps for Education to public schools throughout the state.

May As part of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of renewable

energy, Google make our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project.

In response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Google provide Google Earth imagery of the spill’s spread.

Google roll out a refreshed look for our search results, with a new, contextual left-hand panel that highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query.

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A team of Googlers in London create a photomosaic of the Google logo. (Later, this project becomes the inspiration for a company contest.)

At Google I/O, Google announce Google TV, which is built on Android and Chrome and gives you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, Websites, apps, shows and movies. Google’s busy at I/O this year, with a handful of other announcements and updates.

In celebration of PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, Google release our first-ever playable doodle, complete with all 256 levels and Ms. PAC-MAN. It’s so popular Google soon give it a permanent home.

You have the option to search more securely with SSL-encrypted Google Web search.

Google release a report on our economic impact in the United States: in 2009, Google generated a total of $54 billion of economic activity for American businesses, Websites publishers and non-profits.

The 2010 Doodle 4 Google winner in the U.S. is third grader Mackenzie Melton, for her doodle “Rainforest Habitat.”

Google officially acquire AdMob, a mobile display advertising company.

June You can now personalize your Google.com with a background

image.

With help from the Marin Bee Company, Google install the Hiveplex–four bee hives painted in Google’s colors, situated in a flowered area on our campus. Google have our first honey harvest later in the year.

Google collaborate with the Guggenheim Museum on a global online initiative, called YouTube Play: A Biennale of Creative Video, to discover the most creative video in the world.

Google catch football fever, offering ways for fans to stay on top of the 2010 World Cup as well as a lot of thorough analysis of soccer search trends.

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Caffeine, our new indexing system, provides 50 percent fresher results for Web searches than our last index, and is the largest collection of Web content Google has offered.

Google Voice is now available to anyone in the U.S.

Google stop redirecting Chinese users from Google.cn to Google.com.hk. Instead, Google provide a landing page where users can use Google.cn services that Google can provide without filtering, and/or click through to Google.com.hk for search.

The Google News homepage is redesigned to make your view of news more relevant and easier for you to share interesting stories.

July Google sign an agreement to acquire ITA, a software company

specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.

“Life in a Day” is a cinematic experiment to document one day, as seen through the eyes of people around the world.

Google acquire MetaWeb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world.

Google announce an agreement to purchase the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation at the Next Era Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa.

Google Images gets a new look, designed to make it easier for you to take advantage of some of the powerful technology behind Images.

Google Apps for Government, our newest edition of Google Apps, includes the same Google applications offered to businesses and everyday users, with specific measures to address the policy and security needs of the public sector.

August Google will not continue to develop Google Wave as a standalone

product.

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Google acquire Slide, a social technology company with an extensive history of building new ways for people to connect with others across numerous platforms online.

With Verizon, Google announce a joint policy proposal for an open Internet.

Voice Actions for Android are a series of voice commands that let you control your phone just by speaking.

If you’re in the U.S., you can now call any phone directly from Gmail.

Real-time Search gets a new standalone homepage, along with more tools for exploring and refining real-time results.

“The Wilderness Downtown” is a musical experience created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google, built with Google Chrome in mind using HTML5 and other technologies.

Priority Inbox, an experimental way of handling information overload in Gmail, automatically sorts your email by importance, using a variety of signals.

September Google celebrate Google Chrome’s second birthday with a new

release of the browser that’s three times faster than the original beta.

Google Instant predicts what you’re interested in and shows you search results as you type so you can quickly get to the information you’re looking for.

Our new Family Safety Center is a one-stop shop with info for parents and teachers on how to keep kids safe online.

A new online Transparency Report gives people tools to see where governments are demanding that Google remove content and where Google services are being blocked.

Google News turns eight.

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Google announce the five winners of Project 10^100.

Google celebrate the 50th anniversary of “The Flintstones” with a Google doodle.

Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica imagery comes to Street View. Now, three years after Google first launched Street View in five U.S. cities, you can explore all seven continents at eye level!

October YouTube and Yoko Ono salute John Lennon on what would have

been his 70th birthday.

Self-driving cars! Our experimental technology logs more than 140,000 miles.

Google invest in the Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) backbone, which provides enough renewable wind energy to serve approximately 1.9 million households.

Google Apps for Education hits the 10 million user mark.

Google give $5 million in grants to non-profit organizations that are working to develop new approaches to journalism in the digital age.

Place Search is a new kind of local search result organized around places, enabling you to find what you’re looking for nearby.

November Now you can know what you’re getting before you click

with Google Instant Previews, which shows you a snapshot of each search result.

Google Voice debuts on the iPhone, and Google Instant comes to most smartphones.

With Boutiques.com, fashion-savvy shoppers can create their own online boutiques or browse boutiques curated by celebs, stylists and designers.

3D trees arrive on Google Earth.

Mobile editing comes to Google Docs.

It’s storybook time—Google share an online guidebook about browsers and the Web.

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35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Hotpot, a local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends, is launched. In 2011, it becomes part of Google Places.

December Google doodles migrate to your smartphone.

With the Google eBook store, bibliophiles everywhere can browse and search through more than 3 million eBooks, including hundreds of thousands for sale.

Gingerbread is the latest and fastest version of the Android platform.

The Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs and compares words and phrases over time, showing how their usage has waxed and waned over the years.

In 2010, Google contributed $184 million to charitable organizations, including Google Grants, Google.org tech projects and product support for non-profits.

With more than 120 million Chrome users (up from 40 million in 2009), Google open the Chrome Web Store for business, and introduce a pilot program for Chrome OS notebooks.

2011

January Google announce that co-founder Larry Page will become CEO in

April 2011. Eric Schmidt will be Executive Chairman.

The first episode of the YouTube World View speaker series airs with President Obama answering citizen questions following his State of the Union address.

In the midst of protests in Egypt, Google introduce a service called Speak to Tweet: Dial a phone number, leave your tweet as a voicemail and we’ll publish it for you—meaning anyone can have a voice, even without an Internet connection.

February

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The Google Art Project lets you virtually tour 17 of the world’s best museums and explore high res images of more than 1,000 works of art.

Google.com/weddings debuts with custom templates for Sites and Docs so you can organize all the info you need to plan your nuptials.

Google One Pass lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content, while Google handle payment technology with Google Checkout.

Google Social Search is now more comprehensive, and social results from people you care about are mixed in with your results based on relevance.

A new search algorithm that affects 11.8% of our queries makes further improvements in search results.

March Gridlock begones: Google Maps Navigation now routes you around

traffic, so you can spend more time doing and less time waiting.

Instant Previews come to mobile devices.

Following the devastating earthquake in Japan, our crisis response team and Tokyo office work overtime to assemble resources to help, including Person Finder and an information page with links to pages where you can donate.

Google for Nonprofits puts all our tools for nonprofits under one umbrella to help U.S.-based nonprofits make an even bigger difference.

The @GoogleTalks team uploads its 1000th video to YouTube.

Kansas City, Kansas will be the first community to benefit from our ultra high-speed broadband network, aimed at providing Internet access more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today.

The new +1 button lets you publicly give something a “thumbs up,” helping your friends and contacts find the best stuff when they

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search. +1’s also help show you useful recommendations on the topics you’re interested in, right when you want them—in your search results.

Google establish two new Google domains in Iraq and Tunisia.

Personalize your search results by blocking certain unwanted domains from appearing.

April Google was busy this April Fools’ Day: Gmail motion lets you

control Gmail with your body and a new exercise program, Chromercise, promises to deliver the fitter fingers you’ve always dreamed of.

Google commit up to $100 million in AdWords matching funds to the Startup America Partnership to help jump-start the economy. This same month, Google give $12 million in grants to museums in New York, London, California, Chicago and Boston.

You can now add your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the U.S.

Charlie Chaplin’s 122nd birthday is the occasion for our first-ever live-action Google Doodle.

Google invest $168 million in a solar energy power plant in California’s Mojave Desert; sign a power purchase agreement for wind energy in Oklahoma; and invest approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, anticipated to be the largest wind farm in the world.

A Google a Day is a new daily puzzle that can be solved using your creativity and clever search skills on Google.

Google acquire airline data organization software company ITA.

AdWords advertisers receive free phone support.

The world goes crazy over the royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and Google has no exception, airing it live on YouTube.

May

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At Google I/O, Google focus on Android, launching Music Beta by Google, and Chrome, announcing the first Chromebooks for sale.

Our latest Chrome experiment, “3 Dreams of Black,” is a voyage through three dream worlds set to the collaborative album ROME.

Google Transit goes to Washington, D.C.

Our U.S. economic impact for the year 2010 is $64 billion.

Voters crown seven-year-old Mateo Lopez the U.S. Doodle 4 Google winner.

Google invest $157 million in renewable wind energy via the Alta Wind Energy center.

Happy 6th birthday, YouTube!

Google give a sneak preview of Google Wallet, which lets you tap to pay and use your phone as your wallet.

June Google Offers beta kicks off in Portland, Ore.

The +1 button is released to sites across the entire Web, so you can more easily recommend Websites to friends.

Schema.org, a collaboration among Google, Bing and Yahoo!, supports a common vocabulary for structured data markup across the Web.

Rock on: Our playable doodle in honor of guitar inventor Les Paul becomes the most popular Google doodle of all time.

Our corporate electric vehicle charging infrastructure is the largest the country.

Google invest $280 million to help finance solar installations for homeowners.

Google acquire Admeld to help major publishers get the most out of the rapidly changing and growing display ad landscape.

Google announce image and voice search on the desktop as well as Instant Pages, which gets the top search result ready in the background while you’re choosing which link to click.

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The Google+ project—real-life sharing, rethought for the Web—launches.

All our products start getting a design makeover, beginning with our homepage.

July Talented young scientists wow the judges at the inaugural Google

Science Fair.

Mind the gap: London public transit directions come to Google Maps.

AdWords Express is a faster and simpler way for small businesses to start advertising online in less than five minutes.

Choreographers Pilobolus and OK Go collaborate with us on All is Not Lost, our latest Chrome experiment.

2-step verification is now available in 40 languages and in more than 150 countries to help people keep their Google Accounts secure.

August Google agree to acquire Motorola Mobility.

Google still love Lucy, and Google celebrate her birthday with a Google doodle.

Games come to Google+.

The Street View team goes to the Amazon to capture images of the river, surrounding forests and adjacent river communities.

Music discovery site Magnifier is our latest complement to Music Beta.

You can now +1 a Websites and choose to share it with your circles on Google+.

Google share highlights from our environmentally friendly transportation, food and building programs.

Blogger gets a makeover.

September

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Android blasts off for a second time, rocketing to the International Space Station to help perform tasks like recording sensor data and capturing video footage.

An animated music video doodle honors the birthday of Queen front man Freddie Mercury.

Google launch The Big Picture on Google Green to highlight our environmental impact. Google also announce that Gmail and YouTube are far more energy efficient than non-cloud email and video solutions.

Google acquire Zagat and plan to make it a cornerstone of our local offerings.

The Google Wallet app becomes available on Sprint Nexus S 4G phones, with more to follow.

After a 90-day field trial, the Google+ project moves to open signups. Google also add Search and Hangout features.

In partnership with the Israel Museum, Google digitize the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls.

A $75 million investment in Clean Power Finance brings our total investment amount in clean energy to $850 million.

Blogger gets prettier, faster and more interactive with Dynamic Views.

October Google Earth reaches the one billion download mark.

The YouTube Space Lab, a new educational channel that invites students to submit ideas for a science experiment that can be conducted in space, lifts off.

The latest version of Google Translate for Android expands Conversation Mode, which enables you to translate speech back and forth between languages, to 14 languages.

Presentations in Google Docs gets a revamp and new features.

Google incorporate WebGL into Google Maps to create Google MapsGL, a maps experience with far richer visuals and animations.

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With Samsung, Google unveil the Galaxy Nexus—the first phone designed for Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich.

Our Street View trike rides the rails to capture the stunning Swiss Alps.

The Tunisia Talks channel enables Tunisians to submit questions to political candidates in advance of the country’s landmark free elections.

More updates come to Google+: Learn what people are talking about around the platform with “What’s hot,” see how posts get shared with Ripples and edit photos in Google+ with Creative Kit. Plus, Google+ is now available to Google Apps customers worldwide.

Google carve a spooktacular jack-o-lantern homepage doodle for HalloGoogleen.

November Our redesign comes to Gmail, featuring streamlined conversations,

new HD themes, smarter navigation and more.

The world’s largest pilgrimage—the Hajj, in Saudi Arabia—is broadcast live on YouTube for the first time.

Google+ Pages for businesses, organizations and other entities enable you to connect with all the things you care about.

Google for Veterans and Families brings together Google products and platforms for service members and their families.

Music beta evolves into a broader platform, Google Music, enabling you to buy, play and share your favorite tunes, and store your music in the cloud so you can listen to it anywhere.

Street View goes places with special collections. Take a walk in the park or hit the slopes with a number of new parks and ski resorts.

Gobble, gobble. There’s a create-your-own turkey doodle up on our homepage to celebrate Thanksgiving in the U.S.

Google Maps for Android reaches a new frontier: mapping the indoors.

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Google roll out the next stage in our redesign, a new Google bar that enables you to navigate quickly among all our services.

December YouTube has a new look, complete with a redesigned homepage

and simpler and customizable Channels.

Oui, oui. Google open a new office in Paris—headquarters for all our Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa operations.

Android Market exceeds 10 billion app downloads—with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month.

360-degree panoramic imagery of those areas in Japan affected by the March 2011 earthquake is now available through the Street View feature in Google Maps.

Our end-of-year grants in STEM and girls’ education, empowerment through technology and anti-slavery and human trafficking total $40 million.

Google close out the debut year for Google+ with a few more improvements: the ability to adjust the volume of your circles, redesigned notifications, new features for Google+ Pages and a better photo experience. Google+ Hangouts get some upgrades, too.

Google unveil a new site to make it easy for you to browse our homepage doodles.

2012

January Google.com/elections is a new one-stop shop for news, trends and

online tools for elections around the world.

The creator of the Addams Family gets a 100th birthday doodle.

Search plus Your World is the next step in transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.

Google is the first major Internet services company to have all of our U.S. owned and operated data centers receive ISO 14001 and

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OHSAS 18001 certification, high standards for environmental management and workforce safety.

After the State of the Union, U.S. President Barack Obama has a Google+ Hangout to answer questions directly from citizens.

Google Earth 6.2 makes search improvements, adds a Google+ sharing tool and creates a seamless globe out of a previous patchwork of photographs.

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Management Team

Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in September 1998. Since then, the

company has grown to more than 30,000 employees worldwide, with a

management team that represents some of the most experienced technology

professionals in the industry.

Executive Officers

Larry Page CEO

As Google’s chief executive officer,

Larry is responsible for Google’s day-

to-day-operations, as well as leading the

company’s product development and

technology strategy. He co-founded

Google with Sergey Brin in 1998 while

pursuing a Ph.D. at Stanford University, and was the first CEO until 2001—

growing the company to more than 200 employees and profitability. From 2001 to

2011, Larry was president of products.

Larry holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Michigan,

Ann Arbor and a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University.

He is a member of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) of the University of

Michigan College of Engineering, and together with co-founder Sergey Brin, Larry

was honored with the Marconi Prize in 2004. He is a trustee on the board of the X

PRIZE, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.

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Eric E. Schmidt Executive Chairman

Since joining Google in 2001, Eric

Schmidt has helped grow the company

from a Silicon Valley startup to a global

leader in technology. As executive

chairman, he is responsible for the

external matters of Google: building

partnerships and broader business relationships, government outreach and

technology thought leadership, as well as advising the CEO and senior leadership

on business and policy issues.

From 2001-2011, Eric served as Google’s chief executive officer, overseeing the

company’s technical and business strategy alongside founders Sergey Brin and

Larry Page. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and

diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.

Prior to joining Google, Eric was the chairman and CEO of Novell and chief

technology officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc. previously; he served on the research

staff at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Bell Laboratories and Zilog. He

holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University as

well as a master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of

California, Berkeley.

Eric is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and

Technology and the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council in the U.K. He was elected

to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and inducted into the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow in 2007. He also chairs the board of the

New America Foundation, and since 2008 has been a trustee of the Institute for

Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Sergey Brin Co-Founder

Sergey Brin co-founded Google Inc. in

1998. Today, he directs special projects.

From 2001 to 2011, Sergey served as

president of technology, where he shared

responsibility for the company’s day-to-

day operations with Larry Page and Eric

Schmidt.

Sergey received a bachelor’s degree with honors in mathematics and computer

science from the University of Maryland at College Park. He is currently on leave

from the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, where he

received his master’s degree. Sergey are a member of the National Academy of

Engineering and a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate

Fellowship.

He has published more than a dozen academic papers, including Extracting

Patterns and Relations from the World Wide Web; Dynamic Data Mining: A New

Architecture for Data with High Dimensionality, which he published with Larry

Page; Scalable Techniques for Mining Casual Structures; Dynamic Item set

Counting and Implication Rules for Market Basket Data; and Beyond Market

Baskets: Generalizing Association Rules to Correlations.

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Nikesh Arora Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer

Nikesh oversees all revenue and customer operations, as well as marketing and

partnerships. Since joining Google in 2004, he has held several positions with the

company. Most recently, he led Google’s global direct sales operations. He also

developed and managed the company’s operations in the European, Middle Eastern

and African markets and was responsible for creating and expanding strategic

partnerships in those regions for the benefit of Google’s growing number of users

and advertisers.

Prior to joining Google, he was chief marketing officer and a member of the

management board at T-Mobile Europe. While there, he spearheaded all product

development, terminals, brand and marketing activities of T-Mobile Europe. In

1999, he started working with Deutsche Telekom and founded T-Motion PLC, a

mobile multimedia subsidiary of T-Mobile International. Prior to joining Deutsche

Telekom, Nikesh held management positions at Putnam Investments and Fidelity

Investments in Boston.

Nikesh holds a master’s degree from Boston College and an MBA from

Northeastern University, both of which were awarded with distinction. He also

holds the CFA designation. In 1989, Nikesh graduated from the Institute of

Technology in Varanasi, India with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

David C. Drummond Senior Vice President,

Corporate Development and Chief Legal

Officer

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David Drummond joined Google in 2002, initially as vice president of corporate

development. Today as senior vice president and chief legal officer, he leads

Google’s global teams for legal, government relations, corporate development

(M&A and investment projects) and new business development (strategic

partnerships and licensing opportunities).

David was first introduced to Google in 1998 as a partner in the corporate

transactions group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, one of the nation’s

leading law firms representing technology businesses. He served as Google’s first

outside counsel and worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to incorporate the

company and secure its initial rounds of financing. During his tenure at Wilson

Sonsini, David worked with a wide variety of technology companies to help them

manage complex transactions such as mergers, acquisitions and initial public

offerings.

David earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Santa Clara University and his

JD from Stanford Law School.

Patrick Pichette Senior Vice President and

Chief Financial Officer

Patrick Pichette is Google’s chief financial

officer. He has nearly 20 years of experience in

financial operations and management in the

telecommunications sector, including seven

years at Bell Canada, which he joined in 2001 as

executive vice president of planning and performance management. During his

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time at Bell Canada, he held various executive positions, including CFO from 2002

until the end of 2003, and was instrumental in the management of the most

extensive communications network in Canada and its ongoing migration to a new

national IP-based infrastructure. Prior to joining Bell Canada, Patrick was a partner

at McKinsey & Company, where he was a lead member of McKinsey’s North

American Telecom Practice. He also served as vice president and chief financial

officer of Call-Net Enterprises Inc., a Canadian telecommunications company.

Patrick has been a member of the board of directors of Amyris, Inc., a synthetic

biology company, since March 2010, and serves on its Audit Committee and

Leadership Development and Compensation Committee. He also serves on the

board of Trudeau Foundation. Patrick earned a bachelor’s degree in business

administration from University du Québec à Montréal. He holds a master’s degree

in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University, where he attended

as a Rhodes Scholar.

Senior Leadership

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Board of Directors

Larry Page, CEO – 

Sergey Brin, Co-Founder –

Eric E. Schmidt, Executive Chairman – 

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L. John Doerr has served as a member of our board of directors since May 1999.

John has been a General Partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture

capital firm, since August 1980. John has also been a member of the board of

directors of Amyris, Inc., a synthetic biology company, since May 2006, and

serves on its nominating and governance committee. John was previously a

director of Amazon.com, Inc., an internet retail company, from 1996 to 2010;

Intuit Inc., a provider of business and financial management solutions, from 1990

to 2007; and Move, Inc., a provider of real estate media and technology solutions,

from 1998 to 2008. John holds a Master of Business Administration degree from

Harvard Business School, and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering

and computer science, and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering

from Rice University.

Diane B. Greene has served as a member of our board of directors since January

2012. Diane has also been a member of the board of directors of Intuit Inc., a

provider of business and financial management solutions, since August 2006 and

serves on its audit and risk committee and nominating and corporate governance

committee. Diane co-founded VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization and

virtualization-based cloud infrastructure solutions, in 1998 and took the company

public in 2007. She served as Chief Executive Officer and President of VMware

from 1998 to 2008, as a member of the board of directors of VMware from 2007 to

2008, and as an Executive Vice President of EMC Corporation, a provider of

information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure technologies, solutions and

services, from 2005 to 2008. Prior to VMware, Diane held technical leadership

positions at Silicon Graphics Inc., a provider of technical computing, storage and

data center solutions, Tandem Computers, Inc., a manufacturer of computer

systems, and Sybase Inc., a global enterprise software and services company, and

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was Chief Executive Officer of VXtreme, Inc., a developer of streaming media

solutions. Diane is also a member of The MIT Corporation, the governing body of

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Diane holds a Master of Science degree

in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of

Science degree in naval architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in mechanical engineering from the

University of Vermont.

John L. Hennessy has served as a member of our board of directors since April

2004 and as Lead Independent Director since April 2007. John has served as the

President of Stanford University since September 2000. From 1994 to August

2000, John held various positions at Stanford, including Dean of the Stanford

University School of Engineering and Chair of the Stanford University Department

of Computer Science. John has also been a member of the board of directors of

Cisco Systems, Inc., a networking equipment company, since January 2002, and

serves on its nominating and governance committee and acquisition committee.

John co-founded and served as the chairman of the board of directors of Atheros

Communications, Inc., a wireless semiconductor company, from 1998 to 2010.

John holds a Doctoral degree and a Master of Science degree in computer science

from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and a Bachelor of Science

degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University.

Ann Mather has served as a member of our board of directors since November

2005. Ann has also been a member of the board of directors of: Glu Mobile Inc., a

publisher of mobile games, since September 2005; MGM Holdings Inc., a motion

picture and television production and distribution company, since December 2010,

and serves on its compensation committee; MoneyGram International, Inc., a

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global payment services company, since May 2010; Netflix, Inc., an internet

subscription service for movies and television shows, since July 2010, and serves

on its audit committee; and Solazyme, Inc., a renewable oil and bioproducts

company, since April 2011, and serves as chair of its audit committee. Ann has

also been an independent trustee to the Dodge & Cox Funds board of trustees since

May 2011. Ann was previously a director of Central European Media Enterprises

Group, a developer and operator of national commercial television channels and

stations in Central and Eastern Europe, from 2004 to 2009. From 1999 to 2004,

Ann was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Pixar, a

computer animation studio. Prior to her service at Pixar, Ann was Executive Vice

President and Chief Financial Officer at Village Road-show Pictures, the film

production division of Village Road-show Limited. Ann holds a Master of Arts

degree from Cambridge University in England and is a chartered accountant.

Paul S. Otellini has served as a member of our board of directors since April 2004.

Paul has served as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Intel Corporation,

a semiconductor manufacturing company, since May 2005. Paul has been a

member of the board of directors of Intel since 2002. He also served as Intel’s

Chief Operating Officer from 2002 to May 2005. From 1974 to 2002, Paul held

various positions at Intel, including Executive Vice President and General

Manager, Intel Architecture Group, and Executive Vice President and General

Manager, Sales and Marketing Group. Paul holds a Master of Business

Administration degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor

of Arts degree in economics from the University of San Francisco.

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K. Ram Shriram has served as a member of our board of directors since

September 1998. Ram has been a managing partner of Sherpalo Ventures, LLC, an

angel venture investment company, since January 2000. From August 1998 to

September 1999, Ram served as Vice President of Business Development at

Amazon.com, Inc., an internet retail company. Prior to that, Ram served as

President at Junglee Corporation, a provider of database technology, which was

acquired by Amazon.com in 1998. Ram was an early member of the executive

team at Netscape Communications Corporation. Ram is also on the board of

trustees of Stanford University. Ram holds a Bachelor of Science degree in

mathematics from the University of Madras, India.

Shirley M. Tilghman has served as a member of our board of directors since

October 2005. Shirley has served as the President of Princeton University since

June 2001. From August 1986 to June 2001, she served as a Professor at Princeton

University, and from August 1988 to June 2001, as an Investigator at Howard

Hughes Medical Institute. In 1998, she took the role as founding director of

Princeton’s multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

Shirley holds a Doctoral degree in biochemistry from Temple University, and a

Bachelor of Science degree with honors in chemistry from Queen’s University.

Organizational Structure

History

Founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google has always operated on

the motto, “Don’t be evil.” This moral code helps to guide employees because

Google only holds them accountable to management to a degree. To keep the spirit

of innovation the company was founded on; Google employees are mostly

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accountable to themselves. They have the freedom to spend 70 percent of their

time on current assignments, 20 percent on related projects of their choosing, and

10 percent on new projects in any area they desire.

Features

The “70-20-10 rule” represents a managerial guideline, but it also authorizes the

employees to take risks. Google executives encourage employees and managers to

work directly with each other, instead of through more formal channels. The

executives work closely with employees and other departments in a form of cross-

functional management. Google’s open communication contributes to the

organizational structure and their idea policy is one of the most substantial

managerial features. It gives the staff a sense that they contribute to the company’s

business objectives.

Function

Instead of setting goals for them, Google’s management helps their employees

meet the objectives that the employees set for themselves. The company sees its

managers as leaders who facilitate inspiration and empower employees. Google’s

management function controls employee responsibility in similar way to the

United States government, through a series of checks and balances. All employees

set out and evaluate goals on a quarterly basis. Although Google’s management

makes suggestions, employees use metrics that they choose themselves to measure

their progress toward their goals. Supervisors act as managers to ensure that the

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employees meet their own goals, but employees see them as leaders because the

employees themselves set the benchmarks.

Effects

The company’s leadership allows employees to change the parameters of their jobs

when needed. Employees are encouraged to be their own leaders, evaluate their

jobs and then propose better ways to do their jobs. Google’s leaders want their

employees to “think out loud,” and have open discussions about their goals and

plans for achievement. The structure promotes corporate transparency because

employees are able to witness and contribute to the leadership function. As a result,

almost every employee has access to almost any managerial meeting. Google’s

management realizes that every employee has a stake in the company and

employees in turn feel a responsibility for the outcome of the company’s projects.

Benefits

Google’s methods attract top talent because their management focuses on

controlling through shared vision. Where many companies have bureaucratic and

linear controls, Google allows employees to set and maintain their own standards.

These open policies translate into a distinctive corporate structure that inspires

good nature and guidance. Employees love to work at Google, but not just because

of perks such as flexible work time and bonuses, they also love the work that

comes from the cross-functional leadership structure.

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Brand Portfolio

Google live in a world of brands. Corporations, products, not-for-profit

organizations, celebrities, politicians, nations, tourist destinations, movies, and

more, can now all be looked at as brands. Today, many corporations suffer

from brand proliferation, a phenomenon in which companies keep producing more

and more brands without giving strategic consideration to how these additions

affect their overall brand portfolio. This article reviews key terms, concepts, and

tips related to brand portfolio strategy, the strategic approach to preventing brand

proliferation.

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(A subset of the Google brand portfolio)

The brand portfolio must be considered during brand strategy decisions such as

whether to introduce or phase out brands and sub-brands, extend a brand into

another product category, position a brand as more premium or low cost, enter new

markets or categories, and more. Unfortunately, in many organizations,

consideration of the brand portfolio comes as somewhat of an afterthought.

There are 5 tips that can help companies take on the challenge of brand portfolio

strategy:

Define brand roles.

Take consumer perspective.

Consider brand architecture model.

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Hire someone.

Why isn’t YouTube a content portal?

YouTube acquisition is part of a strategy to monitor key content and audience

hubs.

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Unlike its competition, YouTube follows an open logic and focuses primarily on

developing content distribution tools:

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Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning Strategy

Segmentation Strategy

Overview

One of the most popular and powerful features of Google is Advanced

Segmentation. It lets you isolate and analyze subsets of your traffic. Google sets

and select from predefined segments such as "Paid Traffic" and "Visits with

Conversions" or create its own segments with a flexible, easy-to-use segment

builder. Then, applies one or more of these segments to current or historical data,

and even compare segment performance side by side in reports.

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Targeting Strategy

The goal of the Display Network like Google is simple: to bring your message to

exactly the right customers wherever they are online.

Our contextual targeting tools match your ads to relevant Web pages: like

targeting golf-related Websites if you sell golf clubs.

Our audience targeting tools match your ads to people who are most likely

to be interested in what you're selling: like showing your golf ads to people

who are sports enthusiasts.

Contextual Targeting

Keyword Contextual Targeting delivers relevant messages to users based on the

type of content they consume. You can connect with interested consumers at the

exact moment they’re actively engaged in highly relevant content across the entire

Google Display Network.

Keyword level contextual targeting enables you to:

Find engaged consumers who are interested in what you sell.

Use keyword-level targeting and bidding to reach your best customers.

Add extra power with remarketing, frequency capping, exclusion controls

and other targeting tools.

Keep your brand safe by making sure your ads don't appear next to

undesirable content.

The Google Display Network reaches 92% of all Internet users in the U.S. It's a

terrific way to find new customers and grow your business.

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The Apple, Google, and the open vs. closed positioning war

Over the last few months, the battle to define the meaning of the word "open" has

intensified into one of the more interesting brand positioning exercises seen in

the technology industry.

From the front lines, diving in specifically to examine the battle for Smartphones

leadership, and looking at things from a brand positioning strategy perspective.

Google Goes on Offense

Think back to 2009 and the state of the Smartphones industry. The iPhone had

completely redefined the entire market, while Google was just beginning to see

traction with Android and looking at a long struggle to catch up with Apple.

While most other smartphone makers were attempting to catch up playing by

Apple's rules in the market Apple defined (usually a losing strategy in the long

term when the leader has a solid head start), Google took a different approach—

they tried what now looks to me looks like a classic repositioning strategy.

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According to, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, a book by Jack Trout and Al

Ries (the guys who invented the term positioning) discuss the concept of

repositioning the competition. According to them, the best time to employ a

repositioning strategy is when you can't find a "hole" in the position of your

competition you can exploit to differentiate yourself.

Certainly in the early days of the iPhone, Apple's positioning looked pretty airtight

like beautiful, simple design, incredibly functional and flexible product. Like your

computing world in your pocket, at a reasonable cost.

So rather than join their competition in trying to "out-Apple" Apple, Google began

employing a smart strategy to reposition Apple instead—as "closed" to Google's

"open."

From my point of view, it has been an incredibly effective strategy for Google.

In a world where openness and transparency are themes du jour not just

in business, but also in government, education, the law—you know, the stuff

Google talk about here on opensouce.com—open is so very 2010, where closed is

so, well, 1984 (I couldn't resist).

Google's strategy to reposition one of the world's best-loved brands seems to be

working pretty well, especially within audiences swayed by the power of "open"

(and probably including many of the folks who read and write for this

site, if these articles are any indication).

Apple’s move

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Steve Jobs, a fierce competitor, was never expected to allow his company to be re-

positioned this easily, though.

From my perspective, one of the worst brand positioning mistakes you can make is

to play defense when someone tries to reposition you. It makes me

absolutely cringe when a company being repositioned responds defensively in the

new frame created by their competitor. Apple has been smart not to fall into this

trap.

The best strategy to fight off a repositioning challenge is either to stick to your

guns (if the repositioning attempt is a weak one)

Google's "open vs. closed" repositioning of Apple was a strong move at the right

time. With market share for Android growing quickly, Apple couldn't ignore it.

Over the last few months, I've watched as Apple has made a strong move of their

own to reposition the open vs. closed debate.

Apple's counter-offensive is beautifully articulated in Steve Jobs' comments earlier

this week on the Apple earnings call. Here is a taste from the MacWorld

article about the call:

"In reality, Google think open versus closed is a smokescreen to hide the real

issue," Jobs continued, stating that the real debate is between "fragmented versus

integrated" and which is better for the consumer. "Google think Android is very,

very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day," Jobs said. "Google

think this is a huge strength of our approach compared to Google's... When selling

to users who want their devices to just work, Google believe integrated will trump

fragment every time."

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Bold move. With this statement, Jobs is changing the conversation from "closed

vs. open," a conversation which clearly favors Google, to "integrated vs.

fragmented," which clearly, at least in my view, favors Apple.

From my point of view, both are very strong brand positioning strategies.

Now it's your turn. Which do you think will be the winning brand position in the

long term? Do you see this open vs. closed and fragmented vs. integrated battle

playing out elsewhere?

Market Analysis of Google

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Google Inc. maintains an index of Websites and other online content, and makes

this information freely available to anyone with an Internet connection. 

The company’s automated search technology helps people obtain nearly instant

access to relevant information from its online index. Google generates revenue

primarily by delivering online advertising. 

Businesses use its AdWords program to promote their products and services with

targeted advertising. In addition, the thousands of third-party Websites that

comprise the Google Network use its AdSense program to deliver relevant ads that

generate revenue and enhance the user experience. 

In September 2007, Google completed the acquisition of Postini, Inc., a provider of

information security and compliance solutions. In March 2008, the company

completed the acquisition of Double-Click, which offers online advertisement

serving and management technology to advertisers, Web publishers and

advertisement agencies.

Analysis of Google Inc. A complete and comprehensive analysis of Google Inc.

includes an overview of the industry the company operates in, a PEST Framework

Analysis of the industry, and then moves on to analyzing the company itself.

Company analysis includes a history of Google Inc, a business segment analysis of

the segments Google Inc operates through, a look at the organization structure of

the company, a geographical operating segments analysis, an analysis of the

company’s major competitors.

A financial analysis of Google Inc is presented in the report which includes a ratio

analysis, basic profit and loss analysis, presentation of the company balance sheet,

and much more. 

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A SWOT Framework Analysis of Google Inc and its competitors complete this in-

depth company analysis.

Market scenario

Why is Google trying to change the mobile world?

Mobile industry is based on ‘traditional’ locked value chain.

Entry Barriers stop Google from applying its models to the mobile industry:

Limited Network Access:

- Terminals assigned to unique operator.

- Difficulty interconnecting networks.

Access restricted to services/contents and to their improvement:

- Operator portals favored over other portals.

- Services offered by terminal manufacturers favored over other services.

-Closed operating services.

The mobile industry is not suited for the Google development model based on

openness, interoperability and network effects.

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In order to duplicate its open model, Google designed a threefold strategy:

Acquisitions Android : Open Source

-Android Developer Challenge: Contest for developers to create new applications

for Android.

Open Handset Alliance: Common initiative of 34 mobile phone industry players

(manufacturers, suppliers and distributors) aiming at spreading Android.

Lobbying

-Google candidacy for mobile license attribution aims to force the FCC (Federal

Communication commission) to impose an openness clause to the winner

-A success: clause partially imposed on the winning bidder, Verizon.

Telco partnerships

- Pressure from Google to force operators to offer its applications as default options.

-Sharing of advertising revenues between Google and operators.

In addition, Google developed and acquired mobile devices applications:

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Why is Google buying satellites?

Since 2005 Google has been multiplying investments in all kinds of infrastructures:

\

Internet Infrastructure is actually Google’s business infrastructure:

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Traffic on Google websites depends on internet infrastructure development and

availability (backbone, Wi-Fi, Satellite...)

Google has 3 objectives when investing in the upstream part of its value chain:

Cost-benefit and pricing analysis of Google Products

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Cost-benefit of Google apps

Google Apps & Cloud Computing is the future. As a Business Leader, CEO, CIO,

or CFO you may want to embrace the future, but the lack of clarity on Business

Case and Cost Benefit Analysis proves a stumbling block for many. 

Our senior most and expert consultant at Dhruvsoft work with your Business

Leader, CEO, CIO, or CFO closely to understand your needs and prepare a

Business Case and Cost Benefit Analysis for implementing Google Apps. 

The potential of Cloud Computing in the success of an organization cannot be

ignored. But there are always more questions than answers about the cloud which

is delivering the IT services via web based on an on-demand pricing model. You

may ask so what if I reduce my cost but I may lose control and what about

security. Our viability study will not only cover the cost and benefit aspects but

will also evaluate the risk factors, critical to success factors to deliver you a

comprehensive picture - the helping you in taking a wise decision. 

In the current recessionary scenario Cloud Computing is a good news with lot of

promises to transform your organization and save you much needs $$. It will

change you collaborate with your employees; interact with your business partners

and customers.  

Full commissioned Business Case and Cost Benefit Analysis for Google Apps

assignment typically requires meeting with key leaders in business and IT, though

it is not mandatory. The nature of assignment may vary based on organization

needs.

Cost-Benefit analysis of Google fiber network

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Google on Feb 11, 2010 announced an audacious plan to build what is essentially

the most cutting-edge broadband network in the U.S. While it’s being mis-

portrayed in certain segments of the media as an ISP effort, in reality it’s nothing

more than an experimental network, much like Google’s early efforts to provide

municipal Wi-Fi in the city of Mountain View, Calif.  It will be a trial-only

network, not Google’s entry into telecommunications services. And while the

planned network won’t be cheap, in the end it will be worth the price.

The idea behind the network: provide bandwidth and see if it fosters new user

behavior and thus innovations. Google is admired for creating a real-life laboratory

that will provide intelligence to predict not only the future of the web, but also help

it develop new products to stay relevant. By announcing this network, Google also

showed why it’s quite distinct from its onetime peers such as Yahoo and AOL.

When it is said that Google’s plan was audacious, I said so because of the cost. For

starters, Google wants to offer 1 gigabit-per-second speeds to some 50,000 to

500,000 people. At 2.6 people per household, that roughly translates to between

20,000 and 200,000 homes. Ben Schachter, Internet analyst with Broadpoint

AmTech, estimates that it will cost Google between $3,000 and $8,000 per home,

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or roughly $60 million to $1.6 billion, depending upon the final size and footprint

of the network. If Google reaches, say, 100,000 homes, it would cost the company

about half a billion dollars.

The folks from Calix Networks, a company that sells gear for FTTP networks,

have developed an equation that allows them to calculate the cost per household

depending on population density, which, according to them, is the single most

important factor in calculating the cost of FTTP connection per home. These costs

are quite varied, in some cases as much as $4,000 to connect a single home.

Google’s final tab will depend on where it decides to build out the network.

Analysis of data store operation cost for Google AppEngine for the

new pricing

AppEngine new pricing is making me think how to reduce costs. Here is my

analysis of the data store operation costs:

High-Level

Operation

Cost (Low-Level Operations Required)

Entity Get (per entity) $0.07 per 100k operations (1 Read)

New Entity Put (per

entity) 

with k indexed

property values

$0.20 + k $0.20 +c $0.10 per 100k operations 

(2 Writes + 2 Writes per indexed property value + 1

Write per composite index value)

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and c composite index

values

Example with k=5 and c=1: $0.20 + 5 * $0.20 + 1 *

$0.10 = $1.30 per 100k operations

Existing Entity Put

(per entity)

with k indexed

property values

and c composite index

values

$0.10 + k $0.40 +c $0.20 per 100k operations 

(1 Write + 4 Writes per modified indexed property

value + 2 Writes per modified composite index value)

Example with k=5 and c=1: $0.20 + 5 * $0.40 + 1 *

$0.20 = $2.40 per 100k operations

Entity Delete (per

entity)

with k indexed

property values

and c composite index

values

$0.20 + k $0.20 +c $0.10 per 100k operations 

(2 Writes + 2 Writes per indexed property value + 1

Write per composite index value)

Example with k=5 and c=1: $0.20 + 5 * $0.20 + 1 *

$0.10 = $1.30 per 100k operations

Query

with r entities

returned

$0.07 + r $0.07 per 100k operations (1 Read + 1 Read

per entity returned)

Example with=100: $0.07 + 100 * $0.07 = $7.07 per

100k operations

Query (keys only)

with r entities

returned

$0.07 + r $0.01 per 100k operations (1 Read + 1 Small

per entity returned)

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Example with r=100: $0.07 + 100 * $0.01 = $1.07 per

100k operations

Key allocation (per

key)

$0.01 per 100k operations (1 Small)

The hidden cost of Google Apps

Cheap software can become pricey when the learning curve eats into your

business's productivity.

As said by (CNNMoney.com)--

What happens when a business throws out its scheduling and collaboration tools

and replaces them with Google's low-cost, online business software? To find out,

we at Blumsday migrated entire shop of roughly a dozen employees and

contractors to test out Google Apps.

Six months in, it's clear that Google Apps is remarkably powerful for collaboration

in many ways that Microsoft Office is not. But, unfortunately for small businesses

looking to stretch their IT dollars in these hard times, Google Apps is far from

perfect.

If you have not at least taken a gander at Google Apps, please do yourself a favor

and click here: http://www.google.com/a. What you will find is the real deal, a

"must know about" revolution in small business productivity software. Google

(GOOG, Fortune 500) appears to have created a killer collaboration app for small

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businesses. Among the suite's many, many features: It enables groups to process

documents, send and receive e-mails, schedule meetings, chat, and access

centralized storage spots for critical company information.

It also enables collaboration on digital files in real time by all your employees -

and if you wish, your customers. Google provides its service on the Web, so all

your data is instantly backed up. It has marvelous integration with established

office tools - its syncing feature for Microsoft Outlook, for example, was flawless

in my testing. The schedule-a-meeting function on Google Calendar leaves

Outlook's in the dust. Plus, all this information is available on any computer

running a Web browser, and on most mobile phones with Web access. Just a few

years ago, from companies like Microsoft, Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) or SAP

(SAP), this technology would easily have cost tens or hundreds of thousands of

dollars, if it were available at all.

Google gets even more credit for pricing these tools remarkably cheaply. Google

Apps comes in two versions: Standard Edition is free, but ad-supported. Premier

Edition runs $50 per account, per year - a fraction of the cost of the flotilla of

software Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) pushes on enterprises: Office, Windows,

their various add-ons and all the Exchange and SharePoint servers needed to

enable collaboration. (To be fair, Office's Word and Excel are unmatched by

Google Apps; Google Docs is rudimentary and Google Docs Spreadsheet is simply

awful compared to Excel 2007, which is just about the best program ever.)

So where does Google's excellent collaboration software go bad? Right at the

login.

Identity tangle

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The essential problem with Google is also its great strength: It's a Web-based

application, so access is entirely granted through password-based, online logins.

And Google, because of its success, makes it diabolically easy to confuse

passwords, logins and other Web data. Why? Well, think about it: Not only does

your business have a Google account, but your employees probably have one of

their own as well. So unless everyone has the proper Web addresses and associated

logins down cold, disaster can ensue.

For example, if one uses the browser Internet Explorer to log in to my personal

Gmail account from the Google home page at google.com, one gets to his

jonathanhowardblum@gmail.com account just fine. But unless one is very careful,

Internet Explorer will store my personal Gmail Web page location and log in. To

find ones Blumsday work account hosted by Google, One has to remember to start

at www.google.com/a. That little "a" isn't a typo - it's the critical piece of

information that differentiates my work login from the consumer Gmail product.

Google uses the identical e-mail interface for hosted Google Apps accounts as it

does for Gmail. If you're not paying close attention, it's easy to get mixed up about

which account you're actually using.

The confusion gets worse if you share PCs. For three months, Google Talk was

convinced that user was Nick, my assistant. We finally figured out that we had

shared that test computer - he had once logged in as himself on the machine that

the user was now using, and logging in as user to Google Apps hadn't cleared out

that setting in the browser's memory. User’s team had to fully wipe the cache to

allow user to switch back.

Linda, my head of operations, had her personal Google Calendar account swapped

for her business identity on my Google Calendar about the same period. Until we

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figured out the goof, she missed a bunch of meetings. And to this day, after more

than six months of using Google Apps, one still gets e-mail invitations addressed

to Dan, our intern. Somehow, Google thinks I am him. He missed last week's

meeting in part because he never got an invitation.

Google developers agree that managing identities can be a problem, but they say

that the benefits of functioning at low or no cost, accessing your data anywhere,

and living off the cloud of computers on the Web outweighs these problems.

"There is something in users getting comfortable with browser-based applications.

That is true not just in the Google identity, but in any sort of browser," says Matt

Glotzbach, Google Apps' product management director. "There are some changes

in work behavior needed in using cloud-based computing. But the upside is

tremendous."

The problem is that when you're running a business, you're paying your people

while they struggle through this cultural shift to Web-based applications - and that

can be very costly. Quantifying our spending on Google Apps has been tricky, but

one figures one spends at least half an hour dealing with Google issues every day,

some days more. Most of my people are messing around with it for about that long

each day as well. Compared to other collaboration tools we have tested - Microsoft

Outlook running on Exchange servers, Adobe's Acrobot.com, 37signals' Base

camp and others - we found Google to be a full step backward in its labor intensity.

Google was cheaper and easier to deploy, but it requires more direct handholding

and ongoing maintenance. Right now, we're in the midst of a very not pretty,

employee-by-employee identity checkup - which boils down to any person

remotely going into my workers' desktops to triple checking that all is set up as it

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should be. Google Apps is sexy, but it has a tendency to get confused. And

debugging those crossed wires can be pain.

Some employees will flat-out not use the Google tools unless they absolutely have

to. "My problem is that Google Apps is too damn complicated," says Seth, our

Web editor. "I don't consider myself a technophobe, but I don't have the patience to

wade through all the crap on there. Too many functions, too much information user

don't really need."

Bottom line: Google Apps can be a powerful tool, and it's something you must

consider in these lean times. But user would definitely not attempt this migration

without going for the paid Premier version of the service, which comes with added

support and more functions. Plus, don't do this alone. You are going to need help

from a dedicated Google expert in your shop. You can home grow that person -

none of this stuff is hard. But not matter what, this is such a big shift, that you - not

your Google Expert or anybody else - are going to have to drive the culture of

change this product requires: Your people are going to have to get used to finding

their own IT solutions. The traditional days of a help desk and little yellow order

tickets are gone.

Researcher did find a hidden, "tough love" upside with Google Apps. We are

starting to holding regular sessions to keep everyone up to date on how Google

works; and one finds this, while hard to find, is a great way to not only pay

attention to people and to feel them out for ideas, but also gave researcher a good

indication of who really wants to be here and who does not. Constant change does

have the advantage of driving the dead wood from the shop. If somebody is

signaling they can't handle Google Apps, what else are they are not cut out for in

the business?

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Source: (CNNMoney.com)

The Blumsday LL

C staff contributed to this article. 

Competitor Analysis of Google

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Why does Microsoft fear Google?

Google’s ambition isn’t limited to “in browser” web services, but extends to any

online or offline application market.

Google sets out to enter the online application market, MSF’s cash cow:

How Google wants to compete with facebook?

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In 2007, Google launched Open social: a series of multi platform API allowing

developers to create compatible applications with partnering social networks, Ex:

Slideshare application available on LinkedIn and hi5.

How does Google buy traffic?

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Google asserts its ability to attract users on the sole basis of its services quality and

without turning to advertising. Truth is Google largely buys traffic from providers

Why did Google acquire DoubleClick?

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In 2007, Google acquired DoubleClick, one of the world leaders in display

advertising:

To position itself on the banner.

To reach for highly popular websites.

Why doesn’t Google monetize all of its services?

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Some Google services are free of charge and monetized through advertising:

Blogger: blog creating tool.

Google Health: service for managing and storing personal medical information.

Google News: personalized mash-up of news articles and summary.

Picasa: photo sharing service.

Google SketchUp: 3D model creating tool.

Goog-411: phone information service

How does Google capitalize on Open Source developers work?

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How did Google capture the offline advertising market?

Online advertising market accounts for only 8% of the US market:

Google is exploring the offline ad market!

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Predicting the Future of Google

By: Jayson DeMers

Founder and CEO, AudienceBloom

Since their creation over a decade ago, Google has consistently been one of the

most innovative companies on the internet. When other search engines were

offering results by measuring factors that now seem almost foolish, Google was

determining results based on authority links. As others have had tumultuous rises

and falls, Google has continued along, finding new opportunities sometimes, and

creating new opportunities other times.

Evolving Search

 

Even though many SEOs have disagreed with most of the changes Google has

made to the algorithm used to rank websites, they have delivered consistently high

quality results. As such, they have also helped to legitimize the industry as a

whole. As Google has better identified quality websites and pages, the quality of

SEO practices has also increased accordingly. 

From a perspective focusing solely on search, Google is by far the most innovative

player in the market. 

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Google's Contributions To Advancements In Technology 

Aside from search and its impact on SEO, Google has shown itself to be one of the

most innovative technology companies as well. Most notably starting with Google

Street View, giving mapping technology a new and interactive feel, the Android

mobile operating system, self driving cars, Google Now's ability to rival Siri and

now their recent development of Google Glass, which is a whole new way of

connecting mobile, computing and users that almost seems too futuristic to be true.

They are even involved shopping, video sharing, social networking and gaming. 

That is a great question, and with the recent advancements Google has made in the

last several years, it is an exciting guessing game to play. The inclusion of

Google's Knowledge Graph for search results, as well as the above mentioned tech

advancements would indicate that Google is headed towards becoming a full

service lifestyle tool. 

As Google continues its predictive technologies, it's not far-fetched to predict that

Google is essentially aiming to become a full service technological concierge. The

only real question is how inclusive Google can make its technologies, and what its

competitors may develop to rival Google's products and push innovation even

further. 

Are there any limits?

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Considering that Google has begun developing technologies only previously seen

in science fiction, it's difficult to claim that Google has any limits on where it will

go in the future. The best prediction is likely to be the biggest and most

flamboyant. Google's future lies in making every action of our lives easier and

more connected with the world around us.

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