Google Takes on the World

2. What are Google's sources of competitive advantage? How does it provide value to its users?


I think that Google has several sources of competitive advantage. The search engine technology that combined the Page's PageRank system and Brin's Web crawler was initially the competitive advantage because Google's searches became so effective. Today, I think there are other search engines that use similar technologies, but Google's IT infrastructure is it's biggest source of competitive advantage. It has 450,000 servers between 25 locations around the world. The servers use inexpensive hardware to run a customized version of Linux operating system, MapReduce, Google WorkQueue, and Google File System. These programs simplify processing, create large data sets, groups queries and schedule them for distributed processing, and keeps copies of data in several places so that the data will always be available even if a server fails.

Google spends a third of what its competitors spend to generate a similar amount of computing power. Its infrastructure is flexible and inexpensive which creates a competitive advantage. Its competitive advantage creates value to its users. Google performs searches at a fast rate and provides its users with many different Web-based services and software tools. Google's Adwords provides value to advertisers by positioning the most relevant ads in the most prominent positions from keyword searches. As a business owner, this has been a great valued service to me. My article discusses this Web-based service further. Other services and software tools that create value to its users include; Google Spreadsheets, Google Apps, Google Toolbar, Google News, Gmail, Google Desktop Search, Froogle, Google Maps, Google Talk, Google Checkout and Google Video.

5. How successful do you think Google will be in the future?

I think that Google will continue to be a huge success in the future. Despite the case study mentioning the possibility of Microsoft taking shares of the market in search technology, Google has several other great services and tools to offer its users. Google can avoid Microsoft's past strategies to overcome competition since its applications are Web-based and not tied to the Windows operating system. Google is a company that is constantly looking for ways to grow through innovation, I think it will be around for quite awhile. I know that I use several of Google's services which Microsoft doesn't even offer at this point. I realize that Google may not provide services that all become popular, but certain innovations will be greatly used. It should also continue to focus on its core competency, the search engine. It needs to focus on Microsoft's "deep Web" searches and determine a way to do the same.