Management Practices, Challenges and Opportunities

Google is a public company that was incorporated in the United States in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who started the company with funding of $30 million (Abt, 2007). The company went public in 2004 and was registered as NASDAQ: GOOG as an Internet and computer software company. The first headquarter of the company were based in Menlo Park in the state of California before the corporate moved to Mountain View California. Google is a World Wide Web search company with operating capital of US$ 10.381 billion and revenue amounting to US$ 29.321 billion according to Google (2010). Google is an exemplary example of a company diving the era of information and technology innovations with revenue of about US$9.72 billion because of having adopted contemporary emergent management processes.   

Google is the most impressive company in terms of applying emergent management practices to overcome challenges and capitalize on opportunities.

Google Human resource department is the most extraordinarily organized for the singular reason that the corporate maintains a culture of hiring smart people and particularly university graduates who ought to create a motivating working environment that can encourage easy flow of innovation and creative ideas. According to the Evelyn Rodriguez by 2003, Google had hired 50 PhD workers with the intention to create strong ties with Stanford University and other innovative universities (2003). University research is the source of Google innovation that has seen the company defeat its competitors. Few companies have the financial capacity to reach out to university researchers to make out customized solutions in accordance with company challenges. The cooperation between university and company business is an emergent management practice that has seen Google grow over time while unveiling new products that become instant market hit.                 

Google hiring culture is profiting the company in creating a team of highly qualifies professionals with broad perspectives of approach to management and creativity. The policy of the company is to usually hire the best and most experienced workers with immense power to explore innovation options. Equally, Google is among the few companies in the world who are hiring experts from non-traditional fields such as travelers and social workers to promote the image of the firm.

Summarize emerging management practices of that industry, related challenges, and possible opportunities. Assignment must include one table or figure within the body of the text. Also include how this industry will continue to evolve in terms of its business management style.

Google products have flooded the market but the presence of emergent management policy has helped Google diversify its products into various fields. The Web and search engine business is the main mission of the company. Yet, the company has diversified gaining more users of Google products in the travelling industry that is using Google maps and Ride Finder. Equally, business advertising industry considers as the main internet platform for targeting the largest internet audience. Millions of advertisements are registered with Google advertising products; AdSense, Adwords, Click-to-call, Grants and TV Ads (Google, 2010). Google is the most exemplary company venturing in the standalone applications such as Adwords Editor, Gmail Notifier, Gtalk and Hello Pack.

Google is the sponsor of contemporary and emergent business trends that remain the driving force of innovations witnessed in the World Wide Web. Google’s AdWords program is synonymous with business advertisers who use AdWord to promote branded products and services. Furthermore, Google has encouraged globalization of the advertising industry which was marred with discrimination; today anyone can just log into Google and post an advert using a guide or manual from anywhere in the world (Davison, 2008). Emergent methods of managing data flow are evident in the easy manner in which anyone in the world is able to advertise products through Google platform remotely and even pay for the transactions remotely either through bank money transfer or online payment methods. Google superior methods of marketing have created a platform that hosting millions of internet users who trust Google free products such as Gmail for sending and receiving mails at a click and Reader for reading documents (Abt, 2007). Moreover, unlike traditional advertising methods that maintained strict methods of advertising and regulations, Google are a free application in which seller can make and publish personal adverts using preferred language. In addition, adverting has been made cheaper and less costly with the introduction of options that give each client a choice to select specific targets for each advertisement and each region is differentiate by cost. Therefore, Google has breached the distance between suppliers and customers.

Google has created money making products that have attracted the big advertising market in the World Wide Web; AdSense is business money generating program that usually help third party businesses to generated income in return for channeling relevant adverts to relevant websites whose traffic may include customers. During 2010, Google AdSense program generated US$2.50 billion that represented 30% of total revenue (Google, 2010). Google is staying ahead of most companies in creating contemporary business strategies that make business users always want to work with the company unlike the competitors. For instance, Google offers its clients who use Adwords and AdSense for advertising over 42 language options; few traditional adverting methods can offer a service in two to ten languages, but the capacity of Google to offer a 42 language advertising program is a contemporary e-business tactic that allows suppliers of merchandise and services to get in touch with over 42 ethnic communities dispersed across the world. Furthermore, because of the high customer base and global coverage of the company, Google is offering assorted payment options in 48 different countries and 50 different currencies (Marketing Strategies, 2006). Consequently, though Google is neither a banking institution nor a social cohesion program, the corporation has prompted international banking transactions and social harmony through advertisement, e-commerce and e-business. Google is likely to lose international revenues that account for 55% of the corporate income because of fluctuations in international exchange rates (Google, 2011).

According to Lang John Hagel, John Brown & Lang Davison (2008), Google Inc. has used shaping strategies such as technology advancement trends to develop electronic-commerce and e-business programs. The authors assert that Google AdSense is managed by a contemporary management team that has formulated protocols controlling how adverts are priced, advertised and priced for to avoid cases of overcharge or undercharge culture that affects traditional mass media advertising companies. Google has attracted medium enterprises that target tiny niche markets; the tactic has connected million of small business owner to the World Wide Web that is altogether creating a pool of users, clients and suppliers who have driven goggle revenues by 80% (Hagel at al., 2008). The main challenge facing this strategy is probably oversubscription of business that is likely to reduce suppliers’ capacity to reach the main target customers.

Google used a marketing strategy that attracts more customers and users to join into the marketing pool. Most companies marketing products lack free products to attract customers like the Google free communication tool Gmail and Blogger. Secondly, Google markets its products avoiding using the word products and instead focuses using the phrase “More” and “About Google”. Equally, Google launches new products with newer platforms in a bid to drive the information communication and technology.

Innovation is the cornerstone for the success of business if based on the true needs of the customer; Google asserts that every innovation has to achieve a “User-Centered design” product that adds value to the customer while promoting Google products (2003). Contemporary managers have to master Google design formula of delivering product that customers want to buy. The art of identifying critical areas of uncertainty in business can help corporations avert risk by executing smart ideas that can create appealing products that outsmarted market competitors’ offer (Scott, Mark, & Sinfield, 2008). Google management believes in develop items that customers wants to use and feel free. For example the mobile phone application, “Google Phone”, that runs on Google operating system-Android. Android is a Linux Kernel based operating system that does not discriminate phone core applications from third-party applications thus offering free access to all viable phone applications in the market (Chitu, 2007). The application is yet to be fully integrated into the wide global market but its benefits like connecting and accessing internet services will definitely attraction huge social mobile phone users across the world.   

Google Inc. has outsmarted Internet and computer software companies by adjusting and redirecting management strategies based on results. Google Scholar provides a list of registered scholar and papers, books and articles for students. However, Google academic strategy lacks a clear strategy since the concept is not working because of copyright issues. Secondly, technology innovations and misuse of peer-reviewed articles and scanned copyrighted books is not working since though the material are provided for free, marketing plans are yet to pick up in Google Scholar because of lack of space to advertise products like books (Abt, 2007). Copyright lawsuits by authors, musicians and Movie productions house is likely to interfere with Google future perception to become number one source of social music, books and movies through platforms such as You Tube (Abt, 2007).

The main challenge facing goggle emergent management formula is that Google is selective in the way the corporation offers its services across the world. For instance, while a product like Google Voice in available in most Western and Asian developed countries, the same program is missing in most African countries (Google “Google Voice”, 2011). Minding that Google is a major internet player in the third world and developing countries offer a huge market base, then the deliberate unavailability of some products in specific geographical regions is directly interpreted as discrimination in public opinion.

Moreover, ethically, Google accepts ideas from every sector of the economy; this is particularly true in regard to open-minded products that Google has developed in the market.  Two factors have encouraged the development of open-minded culture. Collaborative working teams within Google office space plus horizontal hierarchy of management has created a motivating atmosphere that fosters open channels of communication. A casual conversation as part of brainstorming sessions is an emergent tactic Google managers use during product discussion meeting. Google invests in high-return projects called “Googlettes” in which engineers work for 3-4 months such that a team of 180 engineers work on 60 projects (Rodriguez, 2003). Teams are usually comprised of 9-10 workers cutting from across all units. On the contrary, traditional management tactic subscribes to the idea that groups should be drawn from related fields. The concept of Google managers using small and agile engineering teams is viable for future business managers to adopt especially in formulation of strategy; small teams easily present open-minded ideas in crude conversation tones that best represent the market needs. In conclusion, Google is an exemplary company that is applying success contemporary emergent management tactics and processes to drive the age of technology innovations and invention for high profit.