Google Harvard Case
Google Case
What were the key factors behind Google's early success?
The main key factor for Google’s early success was the creation of PageRank algorithm. Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page transformed the spam problem of all search engines into an opportunity by creating an algorithm that favored pages that were referenced by other pages rather than simply counting key words. The page’s importance was determined by counting its inbound links, weighting the links more heavily according to Google’s previous analysis. This resulted in the creation of a reliable search engine that did not return any irrelevant listings or spam. Google was therefore delivering search results that people really wanted. In fact “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
In second place Google was able to improve the nature of targeted advertisements. Paid listings were facing the problem of irrelevantly addressed advertisements and also the problem of charging according to a wrong methodology. Google instead sponsored links that were related to searched keywords so that generally a user would find them interesting or, at least, not intrusive. Regarding charges, in 1999 Google introduced the cost-per-impression basis, paying every time an advertisement was viewed, rather than the cost-per-click (CPC) and later on (in 2002) introduced a new method by weighing CPC according to the ratio of the rate of actual click-through rate (CTR) to its expected CTR. In 2003 it also introduced “contextual” paid listings, which were advertisements on web pages, which were correlated to the nature of the advertisement. We can therefore see how much Google gives importance to innovation: in fact Google keeps innovating its own business models, not only creating a highly effective revenue generator but also a better experience for users.
Focus on users is in fact also very important for Google. Google puts users
What were the key factors behind Google's early success?
The main key factor for Google’s early success was the creation of PageRank algorithm. Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page transformed the spam problem of all search engines into an opportunity by creating an algorithm that favored pages that were referenced by other pages rather than simply counting key words. The page’s importance was determined by counting its inbound links, weighting the links more heavily according to Google’s previous analysis. This resulted in the creation of a reliable search engine that did not return any irrelevant listings or spam. Google was therefore delivering search results that people really wanted. In fact “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
In second place Google was able to improve the nature of targeted advertisements. Paid listings were facing the problem of irrelevantly addressed advertisements and also the problem of charging according to a wrong methodology. Google instead sponsored links that were related to searched keywords so that generally a user would find them interesting or, at least, not intrusive. Regarding charges, in 1999 Google introduced the cost-per-impression basis, paying every time an advertisement was viewed, rather than the cost-per-click (CPC) and later on (in 2002) introduced a new method by weighing CPC according to the ratio of the rate of actual click-through rate (CTR) to its expected CTR. In 2003 it also introduced “contextual” paid listings, which were advertisements on web pages, which were correlated to the nature of the advertisement. We can therefore see how much Google gives importance to innovation: in fact Google keeps innovating its own business models, not only creating a highly effective revenue generator but also a better experience for users.
Focus on users is in fact also very important for Google. Google puts users