Google Issue in OZ – part 1

At the moment, Google’s performance is in excellent condition. They control 78.35% of search engine market share worldwide ( Net Applications 2008 ) and their revenue increase $1.5 billion as ended on 31 March 2008. But these do not guarantee Google’s future success since the competition in this market is intense.

I found some interesting issues that could affect Google’s future. They are:

1. Explosive growth makes them lack of focus by creating too many products which create very little revenue.
2. How to sustain current dominant leadership position by adding value to customer?
3. The rise of vertical search. Vertical search is a search service which is focused on a particular field, a particular type of information, or a particular information format. With vertical search, advertisers are able to reach potential customers who are much closer to making a purchase decision rather than the average user using Google search engine. Google has so far stayed focused on horizontal, generic search with a simple, one-bar user interface ( Mitra 2008 ) while players like Kayak, Trulia, TheFind, Indeed, AutoTrader, etc. have gone ahead and developed vertical search engines to offer consumers far more refined results.
4. Click fraud and invalid clicks. Growing incidence of click fraud would increase refunds Google has to make to its advertisers. This would negatively affect the company’s profitability. These invalid clicks could also negatively impact the Google brand. At the same time, invalid clicks could result in reduced return on investment for Google’s advertisers because the invalid clicks will not lead to potential revenue.
5. Fierce competition from Microsoft with their plan to buy Yahoo! in order to compete with Google main SBU which is search engine.

After undertaking an extensive research and considerations, I choose the “How to sustain current dominant leadership position by adding value to customer” issue as our main concern for this assignment. The reasons I choose this issue is because Google leadership depends on a strong brand, and failing to maintain and enhance the brand would hurt Google ability to expand their base of users, advertisers, Google network members and finally it will adversely affected their operating results and financial condition.

The expected outcome of this report is that Google brand will become more influential and ubiquitous among internet brands in the world especially in Australia.

I will discuss what strategies that Google can take especially in Australia to improve their brand awareness towards maintaining their position in the search engine market and how Google can provide value to their customer.