Google's Growth Strategy and Alphabet

This assignment delves into Google's ambitious growth strategy, examining its diversification efforts and the creation of Alphabet as a parent company. It analyzes the impact of Google's core business on its overall strategy, highlighting both successes and challenges faced during this period. The paper discusses Google's investment in hardware, vertical integration across various industries, and the importance of maintaining brand image through a focused mission.

Running head: INFLUENCING ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGY
Influencing Organisational Strategy
Name of Student:
Name of University:
Author’s Note:

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Abstract:
The aim of this report is to answer certain questions related to the corporate strategy of
the Google Company. It also aim to discuss whether Google has a clear vision for the future and
also explore the diversification of Google’s products and services. The need of Google to refocus
on its strategies is also discussed. The revolutionary step of the creation of the Alphabet Inc. was
done by Google and the decision has also been analysed in terms of the strategic decision making
of Google. The report is concluded with a discussion on the influences on the strategy and the
decision making of Google also with regard to the establishment of the new company.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Google’s corporate Strategy:...........................................................................................................3
Whether Google has a clear vision of what it wants to become:.....................................................7
Google’s diversification of products and business:.........................................................................8
The need for Google to refocus:....................................................................................................12
The delineation of the corporate boundaries and businesses or products to be abandoned or sold:
.......................................................................................................................................................14
Influences on Google’s Strategies and complexity and ambiguity of strategic decision making: 15
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................16
References:....................................................................................................................................18

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Introduction:
Google is a multinational public corporation and develops internet based services and
also products. The biggest and the most famous search engines is Google. It has to its credit
more than a billion searches. The company was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a
research project at the time of their PHD in Stanford University. Google is one of the most
dominant search engines possessing a market share of 65%. The search engine is so powerful
that the word “Google” is often used as a verb which means to search. The headquarters of
Google is Googleplex which is at Mountain View, California, USA.
The company earns its revenue from the internet searches, email, online mapping, office
productivity, social networking and also the video sharing services. Google is a user friendly
service which returns personalised results in the twinkling of an eye. More than 70% of
worldwide inline search requests are handled by Google, thereby placing it at the heart of most
of the user’s experience.
Though it started as an online search firm but at present it offers more than 50 Internet
services and products from e-mail and online document creation to the software for the mobile
phones and tablet computers. In addition to this the 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility gave
it the opportunity to sell hardware in the form of mobile phones. Despite the myriad products, the
original search engine tool remains the core of its success. In 2016, Alphabet earned nearly all of
its revenue from Google advertising based on the user’s search requests (Rugman and Verbeke
2017).

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Google’s corporate Strategy:
The corporate strategy of an organisation refers to the overall direction and the scope of a
corporation and the way in which the various businesses operations of the organisation work in
tandem to achieve certain goals set for it. Well placed corporate strategies help in achieving
business success in the long run. The corporate strategies should ideally be flexible so that the
changes taking place in the business environment can be adapted to and the operations can be
modified accordingly. The corporate strategy also involves making the investors trust the
organisation and giving the organisation full freedom to utilize their money for increasing the
equity of the company.
The most common types of strategies that the organisations use include cost leadership,
growth strategy, product differentiation strategy, price-skimming strategy and acquisition
strategy.
The corporate strategy of Google is the broadest and is usually developed with the overall
mission of the organisation in mind. The corporate strategy determines the means for using the
resources in the functional areas of marketing, production, finance, research and development
and human resources in order to reach its organisational goals. Google’s corporate strategy not
only determines the scope of the business but also its resource deployment, competitive
advantages and an overall coordination of the functional areas (Pisano 2015).
Google provides a range of services and products starting from search engines, online
mapping, social networking, video sharing, radio and television advertising, online payments,
mobile phone operating systems, online productivity and several other information domains. The
primary corporate strategy of Google is related to diversification. The diversification strategy

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was achieved by Google through corporate entrepreneurship, innovation and acquisitions.
Diversification enabled Google to increase its offerings and increase competition. As an industry
leader, Google used offensive strategies by constant innovation of its product lines and
expansion into other industries like mobile phones, maps, blogging, news and health. As a part of
its strategy, Google provided users with the most relevant search results on as many topics as
possible.
The growth strategy has also been very important for Google as the company has
launched several products connected to the internet to continue to influence the lives of its users.
Google’s corporate strategy involves accelerating innovation and strengthening brand
loyalty through transformational changes while creating an open source environment. The
corporate strategies increase the overall corporate value. It involves strategic planning at the
corporate level and therefore Google has been able to gain an edge over its competitors because
of its comprehensiveness, relevance, speed and also the user experience. By creating the
Alphabet Inc., Google has been able to create an umbrella or a parent company in order to bring
together all the companies under the same roof however with different streams of operation
management. However, the main source of profit namely the search engine was separated from
the other businesses in order to maintain the investor’s demand for transparent businesses.
Google has also been involved in several products and services apart from the most
important namely the search engine ad it was considered crucial to create a parent company in
order to bring all the other businesses under one roof the search engine remaining the primary
business.

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Figure 1: The share of different web browsers
Figure 2: The percentage of the android device market

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Figure 3: The percentage of the global market shares
Whether Google has a clear vision of what it wants to become:
A vision of a company is the indication or the thought of what a company wants to
become and it also involves transformational initiatives in order to create a specific direction for
the growth of an organisation.
Google is very much focussed on revolutionizing even the most backward corners of the
consumer technology business. The launch of several new products Chrome book, Pixel, Glass
and many more is Google’s way of showing the world what they are capable of doing. It has also
become successful in showing the world that they can do anything they set their minds upon.
Though certain things like the search box of Google remains the same as it used to two decades
back but the machine learning techniques are much better and the search results are much more
personalized (Choi and Varian 2012).
The aim of Google was to revolutionize the future and make information available at the
fingertips of any individual. Vision is basically the guiding force of any company. Google has
always been fighting towards the goal of organising information of the entire world on

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innumerable topics and to make it accessible and of use to people all around the world. The most
famous product which was launched by Google was the search engine. After this several other
products like Google Chrome were launched by Google.
At a time when there were different reports about the simultaneous launches of numerous
products of Google, people were sceptical about the decisions of the company. It was commonly
believed that Google had lost direction of what it actually wanted for itself and for the future of
the organisation (Ledenyov and Ledenyov 2016).
The Company bases its strategy on the diversification and challenges in order to be more
competitive. In conclusion it can be said that the main goal is to make the information much
more accessible and global, whatever the diversification it has to do.
At the time of the creation of the Alphabet Inc., it created the structure for greater
independence to the different businesses of Google and it also answered several questions of the
public. It successfully established the fact that the greater integration of the brands is not the
actual direction of their business. The organisation proved beyond a doubt that it had a great
vision for the future (Cusumano 2016).
Google’s diversification of products and business:
Google is technological company with products and service that assists users in providing
and connecting with information. Core services from Google include search and display
advertising, android operating system platform, consumer content through Google play,
enterprise, commerce and hardware products.

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Figure 4: The worldwide revenue from the digital advertisements

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Figure 5: The online advertising market share
Figure 6: The product framework of Google
Figure 7: The search timeline results

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The core feature of Google is the insinuation of development beyond the business of web
search. The mission of Google is the achievement towards its goals into the diversification into
new products with different purposes. The deliverance of quality enables people to search a
variety of information and deliver quality to empower computing power and advances software
(Glowik 2017).
A significant move was made by Google by entering into the web browsers and
telephones. It also launched the Android mobile development platform. The Google play store
was also launched for the mobile apps, the web store was Lunched for the apps on chrome and
the Chromecast in order to connect the television with mobiles or tablets. The launches by
Google have become the most popular in the past few years (Bassett 2017).
The Google Chrome was the most important browser which was launched by Google in
the year 2008, in the month of September. It has a 45% worldwide usage share of web browsers.
The entire business of Google is that of people using a browser to access the web. Regarding the
android and mobile telephony it was acquired by the company in the year 2005, in order to
develop smarter mobile services that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences. In
this connection it can be said that there is a realistic view of the future market, free and open
source, flexible, fast and stable. Google chrome was a better competitor to the Microsoft’s IE
with an incognito window and browsing option (Bharadwaj et al. 2013).
Regarding the mobile acquisition, the Motorola acquisition was announced on August 15.
Google announced that it would acquire the Motorola Mobility for 12.5 billion. It included the
concept of innovation, the protection of android ecosystem and good financial deals.

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In case of the Chrome browser, the users can directly sign it to the Chrome browser
which allows the engine to provide more targeted search advertisements.
The Google company moved into the hardware business when 6000 mobile devices and
their related patents were bought in July 2011, from the Nortel Networks. Android handsets were
made by it in the Android technology in partnership with Motorola. Apart from the major
amount of diversification in case of web browsers, android technology and mobile devices, the
other spheres in which Google diversified its business where in the fields of social networking
and also in the world of self driven cars. Orkut was introduced to the world by Google along
with the launch of the Google Buzz and Google friend connect. However the launch of Facebook
led to the failure of all these apps and the Google plus also failed in the year 2011 (Blackburn,
Hart and Wainwright 2013).
Google also made an entry into the world of self driven cars, Project Loon in the labs of
Google X, where they encourage innovation and invention new ideas for the world.
The need for Google to refocus:
The most successful Google products
 Google search
 Gmail
 Chrome browser
 Google Fiber
 Google maps
 Google docs

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 Google Analytics
 Google AdWords
 Google Drive
 Chromebooks
The most unsuccessful Google Products
 Google Knol
 Google Wave
 Google Answers
 Google TV
 Google Print Ads
 Google Video
 Web Accelerator
 Dodgeball
 Google Shared Stuff
 Froogle
On careful analysis of the activities of Google, it has been studied that, the company grew
massively from the year 2004 to the year 2014. The number of employees also increased from
2840 to 53600 and this put immense amount of pressure on the procedure of information
management. The company focussed on creating all the brands together to provide them a

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greater amount of scope to grow more independently. It was acknowledged by the authorities in
the annual report that unless it could manage its growth efficiently the service would suffer.
Too many products lead to the risk of the resource mismanagement and also the lack of
efficiency in the business operations. Despite conquering the market for the internet search and
android, there were problems of privacy and mistrust. Therefore it can be said that the company
needs to focus on the mission of organising the information of the world and also make it
universally accessible. The latest technological creation does not guarantee the boundaries that
could be set on the ambitions or the activities of the Alphabet. Therefore Google needs to refocus
on improving the existing products and service than increasing the number of acquisitions.
The delineation of the corporate boundaries and businesses or products to be abandoned or
sold:
Google should continue investing time, effort and the funds in the core businesses. This is
because the highest percentage of revenues comes from the core businesses. In addition to this,
the innovation in the industry needs to keep improving which is nothing but the competitive
advantage. It will also ensure that Google can ensure the dominant position in the market.
Google should also look to expand new areas given the deep analysis of the products
which have a positive NPV. The business industry is dynamic and hence requires the firms to
adapt to any market changes and be aware of the preferences of the customers. The fluctuations
in their preferences also need to be kept in mind. The areas with high growth potential need to be
focussed on. Their competitive advantages also need to be leveraged in addition to leveraging the
Brand equity of Google at the time of introducing new brands for better acceptance and trust on

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the quality. The company should finally reinforce their strengths and be consistent with the
corporate mission and vision.
The company should keep maintaining the strengths and work on the development of the
weaknesses into strengths. The company should also be up to date with the changes in the
industry and make the company culture to be vibrant enough to adapt to them. The company
should grab any opportunity which adds to the competitive advantage of the firm.
The company should cancel unprofitable and unpopular products. It needs to develop
new sources of income, must fight off any attack made by rivals, must make ads useful, must
oppose intelligence agencies openly. The company must also reduce legal expenses, continue its
acquisition strategy and should also invest heavily in order to keep and acquire human capital.
The company must also maintain shareholder voting right in order to maintain strategic
advantage. It can also be recommended that the Google Plus be sold off by Google to stop the
negatives from influencing their market. The company should increase their advertisement sales
generating the products and services.
Influences on Google’s Strategies and complexity and ambiguity of strategic decision
making:
The history of formation of the Google Company was not conventional. The resources
were utilized by the Company managers in order to do something worthwhile for the society.
Several things which were not planned went on to become extremely popular in the long run.
Thus it can safely be said that technological upheaval was not created by the company by sitting
idle. The case study clearly shows that the corporate strategy of Google was influenced by the
trends, technology, competitors and culture.

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Often there are several complexities faced by a company in the formation of their
strategies. Diversification of this sort leads to the mismanagement of operations and due to this
the resources are also not allocated safely. The ambiguity also led to the increased competition in
the market. The biggest question faced by the company was whether to form a parent company
and after formation how to frame the operations. This was the biggest ambiguity in the strategic
decision making.
Being a huge company there are a lot of factors that are to be kept in mind while
designing the operations. Throughout its history it has always been able to maintain its
operations based on the needs of the people in order to emerge successful in the history. Thus the
strategic decision making though complex has usually often been successful.
Conclusion:
All in all it can be said that Google has successfully established itself in the technological
market. The humble beginnings of the company led it to reach a position which everybody
reckoned with. It is commonly not recommended for Google to merge with mass market portals.
Though it would facilitate the users and advertisers, it would ultimately harm the independent
growth of the company. Beyond a doubt, Google has a cutting edge technology and excellent
minds behind and hence provides users with cent percent search results. It is more likely for
users to choose those portals which provide most accurate results.
In case the profit is considered, locking in the maximum market from quality services
automatically help Google in attracting more number of advertisers to make revenue from. Thus
it is recommended that Google should keep updating its technology and services with the same
amount of simplicity and comprehensiveness as it has been providing.

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It is not unknown that Google has a lot on their plate. They derive their revenue
generated from online advertising, economic downturns and companies are quick to cut
advertising budgets and impact Google heavily. To avoid this situation, Google needs to develop
new revenue generating products and services. They can invest in hardware and developing more
forms of hardware such as cell phones or tablet computers which are both becoming even more
common.
The growth strategy was implemented by Google and it also adopted vertical integration
by implementing independence among several industries. It has also been found that it is
beneficial to focus on the basic mission of the business for the Alphabet, so that the brand image
does not get hampered. There have been several ups and downs in Google’s journey and it has
also faced several challenges and dilemmas at the time of strategic decision making. However,
hopes are up that the new launch, Alphabet will be successful just like the way Google itself was
a grand success.

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References:
Bassett, L., 2017. How Google's Android Bundles Could Cost Them Billions in the EU &
India. Mich. St. Int'l L. Rev., 25, p.119.
Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O.A., Pavlou, P.A. and Venkatraman, N.V., 2013. Digital business
strategy: toward a next generation of insights.
Blackburn, R.A., Hart, M. and Wainwright, T., 2013. Small business performance: business,
strategy and owner-manager characteristics. Journal of small business and enterprise
development, 20(1), pp.8-27.
Choi, H. and Varian, H., 2012. Predicting the present with Google Trends. Economic
Record, 88(s1), pp.2-9.
Clark, D., Wakabayashi, D.A.I.S.U.K.E. and Barr, A.L.I.S.T.A.I.R., 2016. Strong Dollar Batters
Earnings for US Tech Firms. Wall Street Journal.
Clifton, B., 2012. Advanced web metrics with Google Analytics. John Wiley & Sons.
Cusumano, M.A., 2016. Is Google's alphabet a good bet?. Communications of the ACM, 60(1),
pp.22-25.
Glowik, M., 2017. 4.5 Case study: Alphabet. Global Strategy in the Service Industries:
Dynamics, Analysis, Growth, p.139.
Goldbach, T., 2016. Introduction. In Control Modes on Mobile Software Platforms (pp. 1-10).
Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden.

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Google.co.in, 2017. About Us | Google. [online] Google.co.in. Available at:
https://www.google.co.in/about/ [Accessed 8 Nov. 2017].
Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Scholes, K., Angwin, D. and Regnér, P., 2013. Exploring strategy
text & cases (Vol. 10). Pearson.
Ledenyov, D.O. and Ledenyov, V.O., 2016. Quantum strategy synthesis by Alphabet Inc.
Pisano, G.P., 2015. You need an innovation strategy. Harvard Business Review, 93(6), pp.44-54.
Rugman, A.M. and Verbeke, A., 2017. Global corporate strategy and trade policy (Vol. 12).
Routledge.