Google as an Organism

Gone are the days when people depict Google as the best search engine in the world. Google is now controlling almost everything in the world, including smartphones, tablets, maps, publishing, cloud, music, video(TV/movies), and social networks.

The mission statement of Google is to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. According to the google website (Google Philosophy, 2014), there are ten beliefs in Google including – “democracy on the web works”, “you can make money without doing evil” and “you can be serious without a suit”. Those statements are representing the commona goals and visions in the Google. On the Culture webpage (Google Culture, 2014), it mentions that the offices and cafes are designed to encourage interactions between Googlers within and across teams, and to spark conversation about work as well as play.

In the movie “The Internship” (Levy, 2013), it filmed in the headquarter of Google Inc. – Googleplex – which located in the California, United State. It demonstrates the Googleplex as a place that employees could work, live and have fun at the same time.

In this essay, the metaphors or organisation as organisms and as culture will be applied to the Google Inc. They are chosen over the other metaphors in the book Images of Organisation by Gareth Morgan (1997) because most of the characteristics of Google operations are like an organism, which will be explained below, and the culture in Google is known very strong. Also, the two metaphors sometimes overlap to give a more complete image of Google Inc.

According to Morgan’s chapter of organisations as organisms, the most important concern of organisms and organisations are what they needs and how their interactions with the environment. There are close structural relationships between the organisms and organisations. Molecules, cells, complex organisms, species and ecology are like individuals, groups, organisations, populations of organisations...