Management Info Systems

Chapter 6

Google -Case Study, P. 186

1. Google’s sources of competitive advantage are several, including its multitude of services, infrastructure, and market share as a search engine provider.

a. Multitude of services – Google is very innovative in that it has offered, mostly successfully, services such as AdWords, Gmail, and AdSensse. It has also inquired and continued to improve DoubleClick as well as YouTube.

b. Google’s infrastructure is independent of Microsoft’s operating system and therefore runs on its own servers. Because Google’s infrastructure is closely guarded and is a secret, the best guess is that it has up to 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 world locations. Google, as of the date of the case writing in the book, handled 56 percent of Web searches.

Google provides value to the average user because make searching on the web faster, with more options available during those searches. Online advertising with Google provides more relevant searches. Users click on ads 50 to 100% more often than on Yahoo! Google also provide a webpage template that novice web designers may use for their start up businesses.

Google also has a telephone voice search, Google Voice Local Search, which enables users to dial an 800 number using speech recognition technology to answer queries about local businesses.

2. Google has some challenges that it must address. One of those challenges is the result of lawsuits regarding copyright infringement in relation to Google Library and Google News services. Additionally, after acquiring You Tube, Viacom filed a suit against Google for damages along with an injunction to stop activities that represent copyright infringements. Google also is now viewed as arrogant and power-hungry.

Management and marketing teams are responsible for these challenges. I cannot see a technology factor involved in these challenges. These are human decisions and possibly weak marketing strategies that brought these...