Google Inc. Business Challenges Essay

Google Inc. is the biggest search engine company in the world. It was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  At the present moment, it is the most visited site in the world and about 70 percent of all search requests go through Google services. Most Internet users of the world turn to Google search engine when they need to find any kind of information on the web. Being the most popular world search engine, Google often becomes involved in legal issues and problems. Since search results may contain prohibited information, secret information, and so on, Google has to apply a number of strategies in order to defend the owners of digital material. In addition, being the most popular search engine, Google possesses a monopoly in the Internet market. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission initiated an investigation aiming to find out if Google manipulates search results using its dominant position on the world market. The results of the investigation became important because they had an impact on the trustworthiness of the results provided by Google and thus had a direct impact on the public image of the company.

 Initially, Google was founded as a search company, but, at the present moment, it provides more than 50 services and products. It sells advertisements, document creation services, mobile software, and many other goods and services. Google makes everything possible to meet the requirements of the changing business surrounding. It works hard to develop technological innovations. “Google’s broad product portfolio and size make it one of the top four influential companies in the high-tech marketplace, along with Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. Despite this myriad of products, its original search tool remains the core of its success. In 2011 Google earned 97 percent of its revenue through advertising based on users’ search requests” (Hosch & Hall, 2015).  The digital market grows every day. The number of people who search for goods and services via the Internet grows as well and Google, being the top search engine, possesses a strong monopoly in this market. This leadership position enables it to choose the most effective developmental strategies.

In the early 1990s, Brin and Page started their experiments aiming to create a convenient and easy-to-use catalog of Internet pages. They developed the system of evaluation, which helped define page rank. Their project started as a non-commercial venture, and the first funding they got from Andy Bechtolsheim from Sun Microsystems, Inc.  Sometime later they used about $1 million from investors to open their first shop. By the middle of 1999, the revenue made about $25 million. Popularity came in 2000 when Yahoo! used Google as a search engine for their site.  This event became a breakthrough for Google Inc. and its popularity grew constantly thereafter. “By 2004, when Yahoo! dispensed with Google’s services, users were searching on Google 200 million times a day. That growth only continued: by the end of 2011 Google was handling some three billion searches per day. The company’s name became so ubiquitous that it entered the lexicon as a verb: to google became a common expression for searching the Internet» (Hosch & Hall, 2015).

Google had to grow its technological potential to be ready to operate with great amounts of information. Google built 11 data centers situated in different parts of the world. Each data center consists of a hundred thousand servers where digital data is stored. At the present moment, the number of Google-linked computers makes several million.  Three basic components make up the core of Google’s operational system. The first component is Google File System is responsible for data storage. The Bigtable, which is the second component, contains all company’s databases. MapReduce is used to operate with high-level data. Google Inc. is a giant company, which operates in different parts of the world.  Different parts of the company are situated in different countries but they all must cooperate very closely to provide quality service.  At the same time, effective management helps to resolve doubting issues. In 2004 the initial public offering of the company made $1.66 billion, making its owners billionaires.  In 2006 Google was added to the Standard and Poor’s 500 indexes. Per the Dow Jones index, Google became one of the largest American companies in 2012.

 Internet advertisement became one of the main sources of income for the company. The Digital era has created a lot of opportunities and businesses gradually changed their location from the real world to the virtual one. The Internet became a powerful commerce tool and advertisers started investing money into the digital advertisement. At this point, Google, being the most popular search engine in the world, quickly became one of the advertisement leaders. The founders of Google managed to predict the global shift to digital goods and services and managed to become an effective mediator who helps people to access information.

After the popularization of smartphones Google Inc. initiated the development of a mobile operating system named Android. This initiative helped to create a new digital market segment.  Google Inc. never stops monitoring the latest trends and tendencies. At the present moment, the company invests considerable amounts of money into the investigation and development of alternative sources of energy.

Being the leader of the digital market, Google Inc. meets constant challenges, including legislation, lawsuits, and other problems. The map of Google’s lawsuits includes most countries of the world. Most lawsuits come because of video-sharing sits, street maps sites, and search results. As the director of the research institute comments in the interview, “The point we’re trying to make is that as Google gets more powerful it’s coming up against more legislature and they’ve got a lot of balls to juggle at the same time. We’ll update on a regular basis and keep up as long as the issues keep arising” (Halliday, 2010). Google is an international company that operates in most parts of the world, except in the countries where it is prohibited. Different countries have different legislations and Google has to meet the problem of constant blames for breaking the legislative systems of different countries. At the present moment, the European Union insists that all versions of Google should be regulated according to EU legislation. At the present moment, Google adapts to European laws only the versions which operate in Europe. At the same time, the EU insists that this law should be applied to all versions of Google and thus demands to make these laws international. This issue becomes a tricky dispute, as it aims to determine how the legal systems of different countries affect digital space. Since legislative systems of the US and the EU contain significant differences in the question of free speech, the dispute gets international significance and defines not only legislation limitations for Google Inc., but also shapes the tendencies of the contemporary legal field of the digital space. In other words, the EU wants search results in different countries to be agreed with the EU legislation. Under such conditions, American users of Google services will be limited in their rights according to the EU legislation. Google defends its position and its right to alter content outside of the EU. For example, Google does not imply the so-called “right to be forgotten” rule for the request which comes from countries outside of the EU. Data protection legislation requires the protection of certain kinds of information in Europe, though such practice does not exist in other countries.  At the present moment, the lawmakers do not believe that the EU will have enough arguments to limit Google’s right to operate information. Any legislative limitations, which will be used for European domains, such as .co.uk, .fr, etc., should be used for .com domain as well in order to be effective. At the same time, laws on privacy are different in the US., and applying European laws to .com domain will mean the limitation of all Google users from all countries. “But as the Googlers at the conference pointed out the laws on privacy and data are really very different in the US. And almost all the sorts of things that have been attracting takedown notices over here would be entirely protected speech in the US. So, which set of laws is it that Google should be attempting to follow? When presenting results on the .com domain that is?” (Warstall, 2014).  The dispute gives ground to serious legislative inquiry. This dispute demonstrates that virtual space is harder to control in comparison to physical space and countries have to look for new ways to resolve the dispute. On the one hand, users of the EU countries must see only search results, which are manifested in accordance with the EU legislation. At the same time, to exclude search results, which do not come in accordance with the UE legislation, it is necessary to exclude them from all search results, e.g. from .com domain. These actions will limit the rights of users outside of the EU. ” But that of course creates huge problems for Google. For they don’t want to drop those results from searches presented to people in the US, Canada, or anywhere else in the world outside the EU. It’s possible to think of a technical solution: perhaps Google could check the geolocation of the enquirer and thus show research results based upon whatever is legal in that place” (Warstall, 2014).  A possible solution would be in creating different versions of the .com sites. Some results will be used for the EU countries, while others for other countries. Such an approach will be cost and time taking. It will require identifying each Google user’s geolocation and providing search results according to this location. Google definitely does not want to turn to this practice. Even in this case, people from different geolocations will have the opportunity to see search results excluded for their version of the search engine and thus the problem will not be resolved completely. Another approach to the problem solution will be in applying EU legislation all over the world. In this case, all search results will be displayed in accordance with the EU legislation.  Google defends its legal right to display search results that violate the legal system of the EU outside of the EU. The EU countries defend their position and insist that search results that are displayed for the users who live on the territory of the Union should exclude information prohibited by the EU legislation.

Legal issues with the EU information protection are not the only problem Google faces in the legal field. The US Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission initiated an investigation of Google search practices and business advertisements.  At the present moment, Google possesses a dominant position as the most commonly used search engine in the world. Commissions aim to find out if Google manipulates search results in order to find out if it gives an advantage to its sponsored partners. In addition, there is a suspicion that Google may be projecting its own products and applications at the expense of its competitors. Other search engine companies complain that their websites get low positions during the search results display.  Google became famous for its unique ranking mechanism, which helped define the most popular sites according to several parameters. At the same time, a number of companies are sure that the results of the search are not genuine and some pagers get lower ranks artificially. “It may look obvious but logically not every website can come out at or near the top of Google’s search results, and so there will always be a party who is unhappy about their rankings. Moreover, and more importantly, Google is a company like any other with the purpose to maximize profits via excelling its business practices i.e. online searching and advertising” (Geiger, 2012).  So, there is always a possibility that Google may use manipulation in the display of the search result with the goal to give a privileged position to the advertisers and partners of the company. Regardless of the results of the investigations, Google is a private company and it has the right to display any search results in accordance with mechanisms, defined by the management of the company. There is no legal procedure that can prohibit Google to prioritize its sponsors and partners in the result of the search results display. At the same time, proof of the manipulations with search results may cause image losses for Google. “The gathering legal proceedings could have significant adverse economic impacts on the search group, similar to the ones in the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft. The multi-front war against several competition authorities at the same time will not be easy to win” (Geiger, 2012). Despite Google being a world-famous leader in the digital market, constant legal issues can bring reputational losses to the image of the company. For the present moment, Google possesses enough power to answer legal challenges and constant lawsuits.  At the same time company operates in a changeable and flexible surroundings. The digital world grows and changes very quickly. New legal norms and regulations are constantly applied to regulate the work of digital companies.

Google’s ability to answer technological challenges helped the company to gain the leading position in the digital market. At the same time, the digital sphere gives ground for speculations and violations. Google automatically becomes responsible for the type of content users share on the Web as long as this content is indexed in Google’s search results.  Google quickly gained popularity after the implementation of the contextual advertisement.  Additional services, such as video search, google books, and mail service enabled Google to gain popularity in other fields of the digital market.  At the same time, all goods and products manifested in Google search results are protected according to copyright legislation. This legislation may be different in different countries and Google has to adapt to the changeable surrounding in order to be able to perform successfully in the global digital sphere.  Google has to develop different mechanisms, which can be used to defend the copyright of companies and private users who share their information on the Internet. Being a world digital giant, Google is constantly involved in different lawsuits and legal issues. At the same time, the company’s revenue and popularity constantly grow and till the present moment, the heads of the company found effective means to answer all challenges, including lawsuits.

References

Halliday, Josh, July 29,  2010).  Mapping Google’s legal Issues, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jul/29/google-lawsuits-map

Hosch, W. L., Hall, M. (October 11, 2015). Google Inc. American Company, Encyclopedia of Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Google-Inc

Geiger, A., (May 2012). Google’s never-ending legal problems, The Hill. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/226461-googles-never-ending-legal-problems

 Hölzle, Urs (December 6, 2016). “We’re set to reach 100% renewable energy — and it’s just the beginning”. The Keyword Google Blog. Google.  https://blog.google/topics/environment/100-percent-renewable-energy/

Schwartz, Barry (May 2, 2011). “Does Google Have a Class System For Googlers?”. SearchEngineLand. Worstall,  T., (October 31, 2014).  Google’s Legal Problem: It Should Obey The Laws Of Which Country? Forbes