Case Study Analysis: Google's Balancing Act - Privacy and Profit

This case study examines Google's strategies for maintaining profitability while navigating the complexities of user privacy. It explores Google's approach to serving its stakeholders, including customers, employees, government, investors, and society. The analysis delves into the specific strategies Google employs to balance profit generation with the protection of user data, including the implementation of various privacy policies. The study also considers the impact of global regulations on Google's operations and how the company adapts to these evolving standards. The case study highlights Google's efforts to manage its resources responsibly and contribute to the development of the communities in which it operates. The paper covers how Google collects and uses user information, emphasizing the measures taken to safeguard sensitive data from unauthorized access, ensuring data security and transparency to maintain customer trust and loyalty.

Assignment
Case study
Google: The Quest to Balance Privacy with Profit
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Executive Summary
The main focus of the study is to reveal the process followed by Google to earn profit in the
information technology industry. The study also will mention the privacy policy adopted by
Google to protect the private information of people. The Global regulations related to the
collection of private information of the people also will be motioned in the study.
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Table of content
Section 1: Introduction....................................................................................................................4
Overview of the Google:.................................................................................................................4
Section 2: Questions related to the report........................................................................................5
I) Implementation of the strategies in Google to serve all stakeholders..........................................5
II) The process followed by Google to maintain the profitability without disrespecting the
privacy.............................................................................................................................................7
III) The impact of the global regulations associated with the privacy on the operations of Google
.........................................................................................................................................................9
Section 3: Conclusion....................................................................................................................10
Reference list.................................................................................................................................11
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Section 1: Introduction
The Information technology industry plays a vital role in the modern society to improve the
standard of life of the people. Information technologies provide different types of medium to the
people for acquiring knowledge about the world. The important mediums are social networking,
search engines, video sharing sites and mail software. These kinds of medium not only improve
the standard of life but also increase the speed of life. The information technology industry also
provides some software such as word processing software; excel sheets, sliding software to
increase the efficiency in the data processing industry. Due to the improvement in the
information technologies now people can easily stare, share and retrieve the information with
high protection (Charry and Tessitore, 2016, p.270). However, sometime the information
technology cross the line of privacy and retrieve all private information that can damage the
standard of life of the people. The following study discuss about the limitation of the information
technology industry towards the protection of privacy life of people. The study also provides
some rules and regulations that have to consider by the information technology companies to
protect the privacy of the people.
Overview of the Google:
The study also discuss about the rules and regulations followed by the Google to protect the
privacy of the people. Google is a well known multinational company in the information
technology industry (www.google.com). Google is an important company in the information
technology industry that helps the people by providing different internet related softwares,
products and services to the people. Google also provide different technological services such as
online advertising, cloud computing software and hardware. In 1998, Google was established by
Larry Page and Sergey Brin in California, United States. Company also provide networking sites
such as Google search engines where people can acquire different knowledge about any topic,
Google+ is a social networking site where people can make some friends from anywhere in the
world. YouTube is the place where people can share their videos and present their talent in an
international stage. Google also provide a massaging portal Gmail where people can easily share
information through the massage.
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Section 2: Questions related to the report
I) Implementation of the strategies in Google to serve all stakeholders
As Google is a social entity therefore, it has to discharge some responsibilities towards the
stakeholders of the society (Vaccaro, 2014, p.55). Google use different resources from the
society to run their business activities in an efficient manner. The main stakeholders of Google
are Consumers, employees, government, Investors, board of directors and society. Google
implement different strategies to provide equal services to all stakeholders. The strategies are as
follows:
Customers: Customers are the important stakeholders for Google because there are the users of
the software provided by Google (Mahalwar, 2017, p.154). The customers are the sources of the
revenues for the Google. Therefore, Google have to discharge some responsibilities to the
customers to maintain the loyalty among them about the company. The strategies that Google
implement to discharge their responsibilities towards the customers are as follows:
A) Google design and develop different software according to the requirement of the customers.
B) Google tries to provide all type of information to the customers in details.
C) Google always tries to reduce the complexities of the user interface to provide a excellent
experience to the people.
D) Google tries to increase the features of the software for the customers (Debrett, 2015, p.560).
E) Google also provides a portal for the customers where customer provides their complaints,
opinions and ideas about the services of the company. The excellent customer services of the
company resolve all the complaint of the customers in an efficient manner.
F) Gooogle is also serious about the privacy of the customers and always try to take some
effective measures about the protection of the privacy. Google protect the private information
from the unauthorized access and provide a security interface to protect the information related
the social security from the unauthorized hacking.
Employees: Employees are the important resources for the Google. The skills and knowledge of
the employees help the company to design and develop new products and services for the
customers. Therefore, Company tries to provide all types of facilities to discharge responsibilities
towards the employees. Providing excellent facilities is main strategy of Google to satisfy the
employees. The facilities are as follows:
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A) Google provides excellent remuneration to the employees and the incentive scheme always
motivate the employees to provide their best effort towards the success of the company.
B) Google also provides different leave for the employees such as sick leave, maternity leave,
paternity leave etc (Kunz, 2015, p.175).
C) Company bears all expenses of the holiday travel of the employees.
D) Company provides different facilities in the working premises to increase the comfort ability
of the working environment.
Government: Google use different infrastructural facilities provided by the government such as
electricity, security, transport, satellites, land, towers etc to run the business activities in an
efficient manner. As the tax is only source of revenue of the government to bear the expenses of
such facilities. Therefore, Google always try to clear all the taxes of the government time to time.
The payment of tax is also a corporate social responsibility of Google (Lloyd, 2014, p.120).
Investors: Investors are the source of generating financial resources for Google. The continuous
flow of financial resources helps the company to run the business activities without any
interruption due to the lack of financial resources. Therefore, company has to fill all
responsibilities towards the investors. As the income of the investors depend on the income of
google therefore, it is responsibility of Google to prepare the all financial statement appropriately
from which the investors can calculate their income in a proper manner and easily. Google
always maintain the transparency in the financial statements about the revenue and expenditure
of the company (Bently and Sherman, 2014, p.95). The transparency in the financial statements
increases the integrity in the investors about the company and attracts more investors to generate
more financial resources.
Board of directors: The boards of directors are the equity shareholders of Google and take
important decisions about the business activities of Google. The effective decision of the board
of directors helps Google to increase the efficiency of the activities and generate more revenues
from such activities. Therefore, Google always try to provide remuneration, bonus and share of
the profit to the board of directors to discharge the responsibilities towards them.
Society: As Google run all their business activities in the society and use the resources provided
by the society in the business activities therefore it has to discharge some responsibilities as a
strategy for satisfying the society. The responsibilities are as follows:
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A) Google has to adopt a proper resource management process in the business activities to
reduce the wastage of resources (Taylor et al. 2014, p.104 ).
B) Google always try to protect the environment from the harmful gases by adopting some
scientific techniques in the production process.
C) Google tries to make some contribution towards the education of the children in the society.
D) Google tries to make some contribution towards the development of the backward
community.
E) Google can make some contribution towards the development of handicapped people by
recruiting them in the company.
All the above responsibilities discharged by the Google are working as an strategy to serve the
equal services to all stakeholders.
II) The process followed by Google to maintain the profitability without
disrespecting the privacy
Providing information is the main activity of the organisations for which Google earn the profit.
However, Google have to protect the private information of the people from the unauthorized
access. Google use the private information to know about the requirement of the people about the
technologies such information help Google to design and develop technological products
according to the requirements of the people. Sometime, hackers try to hack different
organisational database to get some important information related to the social security. Google
has to protect such information from such unauthorized access of the hackers. Different
organisation maintains secrecy in their database to conceal the relevant information about the
strategies from the competitors. Mostly organisations use the clouding softwares and hardwares
provided by Google to maintain the database. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the Google to
protect such database from the hackers (Bently and Sherman, 2014, p.95). Google provide all
kind of security software to the organisations to increase the protection features of the database.
The privacy security features of the database increase the goodwill of google among the
customers and increase the number of customers of Google. Google prepare different privacy
policies to protect the private information of the customer. The policies are as follows:
A) First privacy policy of Google related to the nature of the information collected from the
customers. Google always explain what kind of the information they collect and the cause of th
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collection to the customers. That helps Google to build a transparent relationship with the
customers. The relationship increases the loyalty among the customers about the products of
Google. Google can maintain the profitability with such loyalty.
B) Google provides all relevant information to the customers about the process of using the
private information and provides some choices about the process of using information to the
customers. This policy increase of the customers on Google therefore, customers also provide all
relevant information without any hesitation (Kunz, 2015, p.175).
C) Generally, Google collect the personal information of the customers such as name, address,
telephone number, credit card information etc. These information help the customers to use the
different products of Google of customers. This information help Google to maintain the identity
of the customers. Therefore, Google can provide all the information to the customers according
to their identity.
D) Google collects the information about the device by which the customers use the software of
Google. Therefore, Google can provide such portals according to the device used by the
customers. For example Google provide different search engine portal for different devices such
as 2g mobile, 3g mobile, laptop, personal computer etc. Google also collect the information
about the operating system used by the customers.
E) Google also collects the log information of the customers to know about the server used by
the customers to access the search engine of Google. Google is use different log information
such as phone numbers, calling party numbers, time of calls, Internet protocol address etc.
F) Google map use the location information of the customers. This information help the
customers by providing knowledge about the location. It plays a vital role in the social security
by identify the locations of the criminals through the map (Lloyd, 2014, p.102).
G) Google also collects the information about the unique application number by which company
can know detail information about the operating system used by the customers. This information
helps Google to update the server according to the changes in the operating system used by the
customers.
H) Google provides browser web storage and application data caches to store the collected
personal information about the customer. Customers also use these mechanisms to access and
retrieve their personal information.
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I) Google use the Cookies technology to provide all relevant advertisement related to searching
topic of the customers this address help the customers to acquire detail information about the
topic.
J) Google also maintains a transparency in the use of private information of the customers.
Google try to update and control the activity of the customers. Google also provide an
opportunity to the customers to edit and view the private information of the customers.
All the above privacy policy not only secure the personal information of the customers but also
increase the integrity and reliability of the customers towards the company. The increment in the
integrity in the customers helps Google to build a brand in the industry. The increment in the
number of customers increases the profit of the company. In that way Google maintain their
profitability without disturbing the privacy of the company.
III) The impact of the global regulations associated with the privacy on the
operations of Google
The global regulations associated with the privacy of information of the people include different
principles. The principles are as follows:
A) The information technology companies should maintain the accountability of the information
used by them. This accountability helps them to track all the information of customers in an
efficient manner.
B) The purpose of collection of such information about the customer should be reveal by the
information technology company to maintain the transparency in the use of such information.
C) The company should provide a notice to the customers before using the private information of
them and ask permission to the customers to use such information.
D) Company should provide some security features to the information of the customers to avoid
the abuse and unauthorized access of such information.
E) The company has to disclose all the relevant about their identity to the customers before
collecting such information. The customer can make decision about the sharing information
based on the identity of the company.
F) The company cannot collect and access the information without revealing the consent of the
collection of such information to the customer.
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G) Information technology companies have to provide an opportunity to the customers to edit the
inaccurate information. The customers also can update the information according the global
regulations of privacy protection (Mahalwar, 2017, p.157).
H) Companies have to consider all the legal laws and legislations such as data protection act,
privacy protection act etc while using the private information of the customers.
I) Companies also have to consider all the limitations provided by the global regulations while
using such private information of the customers.
J) Companies also have to maintain the accuracy, openness, and safeguards while using private
information of the customers.
The adoption of all the above regulation has some great impact on the business operations of
Google. Now Google cannot use private information of the people at any time and at any cause.
Google has to provide all relevant information to the customers about the use of such private
information (Kunz, 2015, p.178). These legal procedures will slow the business activities of the
company and they cannot provide services to the customers as quickly as possible. However,, the
global regulations help Google to provide some better security features to protect the private
information of the customers. The implementation of all the above global regulation in the
privacy policy of Google helps to build a transparent relationship with the customers. This
increase the number of customers and increase the profit of the Google.
Section 3: Conclusion
The above study try to provide all relevant knowledge about the privacy policy of Google and
the process followed by Google to maintain a gentle profit without disturbing the privacy of the
customers. The study also tries providing some knowledge about the global regulations
associated with the collection and using the private information about the people. The other
information technology companies can adopt the privacy policy of Google for maintaining profit
without disturbing the privacy of the customers to be successful in the information technology
industry.
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Reference list
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for Balance. In Advertising in New Formats and Media: Current Research and Implications for
Marketers (pp. 265-290). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Debrett, M., 2015. “Tools for Citizenship?” Public Service Media as a Site for Civic
Engagement: An Australian Case Study. Television & New Media, 16(6), pp.557-575.
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GB/about/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2017].
Kunz, B., 2015. Germany's Unnecessary Hegemony: Berlin's Seeking of ‘Tranquility, Profit and
Power’in the Absence of Systemic Constraints. Politics, 35(2), pp.172-182.
Lloyd, I., 2014. Information technology law. Oxford University Press, USA.
Mahalwar, V., 2017. Copyright and Human Rights: The Quest for a Fair Balance. In Copyright
Law in the Digital World (pp. 151-174). Springer Singapore.
Taylor, R.W., Fritsch, E.J. and Liederbach, J., 2014. Digital crime and digital terrorism. Prentice
Hall Press.
Vaccaro, I., 2014. The power of uncertainty: the neoliberal quest for profit in Spain. Journal of
International and Global Studies, 5(2), pp.53-76.
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