As usual, my apologies for not updating quite, um, often. It seems that a post for a month eh?

Anyway, for January’s case review, it was one of my colleagues that got the honor to present a case study about Google Inc.

Google Inc.

We all know that Google is one of the most respected and, also to mention, beloved brands in the world. Started by the duo Page and Brin, Google expanded rapidly as the pioneer in search engine industry in the Internet. During that time (1995-1996, methink) the Internet wasn’t as sophisticated as now (well, d’uh) and during 2000 alone, there was ‘dot-com bubble’ where many web-based companies went bankruptcy or filed liquidation.

Somehow we wondered, what caused the ‘dot-com bubble’? The Internet was on its frenzy when many people gained access to the web and many people also believed that the Internet is the next ‘it’ thing. Sure that the Internet is the next ‘it’ thing and many people still see the Internet as a gateway to golden opportunities nowadays. However, a thing that most common people forgot is whether they have the capabilities to, at least, survive in the midst of hullaballo over the Net.

We could find practically EVERYTHING over the Net. Everything is available over the Net and the next thing every businesspeople know, the market is getting overflowed of information. In short, we have what called as ‘information flood.’ Information flood is not a good thing. It’s true that information is a precious asset and many people are aspiring information; but then when one got too much information, subconsciously he will build his barricade in order to filter the information. Which information that he allowed to be received and which information isn’t allowed. In other words, we are having our own firewall system.

In short, that’s one thing that many people didn’t aware of. The products/services that they offered over the Net isn’t valuable/precious/different enough to stand out on the market and compete with many other rivals. If the competition mapping in reality world is already big enough, Internet is giving bigger war field without no ends. That is why many companies nowadays who realized that they don’t have enough capabilities to survive solely on the Net is using the Internet as a medium to share information. Not more. Once upon a time we have brick-and-mortar and purely-web-based market, now we have hybrid market where a company is combining both its traditional efforts and web efforts.

Google Inc. on the other hand is having expertise over the Net. Both of Google founders are PhDs and they realized one crucial thing about the dire need of the user.

What User Really Wanted

Remember when I mentioned above that we have this information flood? Good. So, what will we do when we want to filter the information? We are looking for relevancy, that is, by using our limited or little amount of our knowledge about something that we want to look for, we search for it over the Net. We called that ‘limited/little amount of knowledge’ as keywords. You don’t have to know and memorize the whole book in order to know what the book is all about. All you have to do is memorizing several important and interesting words and lines that you recognized and the next thing you know, you know the content of the book. In short, you are having the keywords (or keylines, whatever) of the book.

Google understands this perfectly. Instead of bombarding the users with vast information which will cause more chaos (and high possibility of useless information), Google is delivering a service of giving information about what user really want from the first place.

Ooh, I want to know everything about Sherlock Holmes! Quick, here’s a Google. What should I do? Well, I type ‘detective, Sherlock Holmes’, click the ‘Search’ button and voila! The results are in.

Nothing is more satisfying rather than getting what we really wanted.

Google Prevails

Google is loved. I myself gone hysterical when I saw my colleague wore Google T-shirt that he got from Google CodeJam competition in India which had words ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ at the back of the T-shirt and Seth Godin said that when he walked in a market at Thailand, a guy suddenly came up to him and said, “Thank God for Google!”

A good brand is a loved brand. Practically many people recognized it and even people are using the name of the brand for a verb in daily conversation.

“Hey, I have tried to find any information about this particular subject about DNA analysis but I got nada. Any suggestions?”

“Have you Google-d it?”

Another big brand whom aspiring to be in that kind of position is Xerox. An executive at Xerox once said that in a very near future, nobody will say “please copy this” but they will say “please Xerox it.”

(Many) Products of Google

It is Google’s strength as having customer’s Top-Of-Mind in term of search engine but many common people (i.e. people who rarely used Internet. They tend to use Internet in a very small basis) didn’t know that Google also has Blogger, Picasa, Orkut, Google Reader, Google Scholar, Google Image Search, iGoogle, Google Calendar, Google Earth… Shall I continue more?

One breakthrough attempt that Google has done successfully is implementing an early Identity 2.0 theory. Identity 2.0 is a concept that one day we as user didn’t have to have different usernames and/or different passwords for each different websites/web accounts that we all have. When was the last time that you have to struggle to create an unique username and think about a password? I did that just last month when I should make a new password for my del.icio.us account which was not a very pleasant experience, mind you. An example of Identity 2.0 implementation; say, for example, you have an account at Facebook. Once you logged in into your Facebook account, automatically you logged in also at your Flickr account, WordPress account, del.icio.us account and many more. It’s very convenient for us as user and saves our time.

Google has this early adoption of Identity 2.0. Once we logged to our iGoogle account, automatically we are logged in our GTalk, GMail, Blogger, Orkut, Picasa and many Google products. It’s very convenient. Yahoo! has this kind of system also.

Google’s Next Steps?

Google has a very solid team. They are creative and bright people. Google office also being conditioned as ‘campus environment’ since the Board of Directors believes that campus environment is the most creative environment so the people at Google could deliver their most creative and supportive ideas. It’s even rumored that Google has the best cafeteria at the office.

So the question is, what’s next? Google has reached its pinnacle and proved its success stories. Somebody gotta go forward if they didn’t want to get stuck. So what Google could do next? That is the question of this case study.

I slightly remembered during April Mop 2004, Google joked at its website that Google has finished its Lunar Center at Moon and having its ‘Lunar Headquarter’ while we all know, it was a joke.

The funny thing is, somehow deep inside here I believe that one day Google will really build its Lunar Center. Letsee then

Powered by ScribeFire.