Google was founded by two graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, and since then, the company has been growing so rapidly. In four years between 2002 and 2006, its revenues skyrocketed from $500 million to $10 billion, and with many different and aggressive strategies, Google keeps being profitable each year. Google has success in its management approach, but it is not certain that whether its success comes from its management approach or its management approach is an outcome of its success. Therefore, it is hard to say that Google’s strategy will work for every company follows it, because even Google has both success and failure, while implementing its strategies.
Since Google became very successful in a very short time, it is fascinated by executives and general public, and seen as a new, successful business model. As described by London Business School professor Gary Hamel, it is “a modern management pioneer” which matches the needs of 21st century. However, business executives should not jump into this attractive picture, and be careful before they get involved to Google as many others.
Obviously, the very first key point of Google’s success is its complementary advantage. Google publish advertisements on its own site to get revenue by means of them, and in return it provides free information service to its customers. As the internet access and activities increase, more ads will be seen and Google will make more profit, which is another reason for Google to promote free information which scares many companies in different industries. The other issue that frightens other companies is the cost of failure for Google. Even if a beta program of Google failures, Google can still make profit by means of advertising. Therefore, failure is cheap f ...