The Fortune list of companies is an international list of companies updated each year, which provides the names of the top grossing and most profitable companies of that year. Several multi-national companies make great efforts to remain a part of this list by improving several of their parameters like working culture, profitability, employee satisfaction, customer care etc. amongst other parameters (Day). This list consists of some of the big names of the day like Google. One organization that has constantly remained a part of this list is the Google. The Google is a United States based software and information technology giant that provides software and services for almost all forms of IT related ventures. The Google Inc. is considered as one of the best amongst American organizations in terms of customer services, customer care, employee satisfaction, business ethics etc. The following paper is a discussion of the Fortune 100 Company, Google.
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University, California, in the year 1996 as a research project. The developers originally termed their search engine as Gogol, a term used for a number with more than ten digits after the significant figure. The humble beginnings of the company came from an innovative approach to the search engine functioning known as the Page Ranking method. However, their popularity grew with increased customer satisfaction and the company began to grow by the year 2000 (Wilcox). Microsoft recognized the growing popularity of the company and its products and tried to launch products in competition with their Google Search engine. Google responded with a concept used by other innovative companies in their time by providing diversified software services that made google a one stop solution centre for all of the users needs. This move helped them to earn more customer satisfaction and run the competition against Microsoft (Lacy and Greene). The company also faced buy out proposals from Microsoft, which was rejected in the coming years (Taylor). Google. acquired several software as well as internet based companies in the due course of years and diversified its product line with web based services and products to compliment with their Google search engine as well as develop it (Taylor). Google was known to possess some of the highest shares in the American market with proposals for IPOs in the year 2004 reaching up to eight hundred US dollars. Google was declared Fortunes 100 best Companies to Work For list for consecutive years, and was declared one of the most admired companies in the American market (Lacy and Greene). Currently Google holds a product line with featured products like Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Android and a hoard software like Picasa, amongst other services that provide various services like file sharing, official organization, high end marketing, analytical data etc. Google is also known for its philanthropic activities and development of the environmental awareness programs. The most sought after product from Google Inc. after Google Search Engine is the Android Operating system used widely in most of the smart phone devices in the present day.
The Google Inc. is an ever growing firm that looks for ways and means to remain up to date with the current trending technologies. The Google, founder Sergey Brin had the vision that soon connecting would phase out of pen and paper and would be majorly be carried out through internet (Taylor). This innovative idea in the early years of 2000s carried the organization forward and carries it forward still as the company develops and innovates in its search engine as well as internet based services along with diversifying its culture through acquisition of organizations that provide software as well as online help in taxation and accounting (Wilcox). The recent drive for the company has been to increase its influence online as it continues to perceive and understand the needs of the user as computer technology grows and diversifies.
The Google. business model, like almost all other business models works on the principle of creating a niche and then diversifying continuously to survive and accountability and profitability with its customers (Lacy and Greene). For Google Inc., the Google Search Engine was rhe staple service used by the organization for nearly half a decade before it saw profits and began to acquire other organizations and individuals who could help increase the contents of their product basket. However the organization rigorously follows updating and diversification to keep their products up-to-date. Today the product range includes Analytics, Cloud computing support, Operating Systems, Web Browsers, Office software packages etc.
Google. has one of the best employment cultures in the United States with employment satisfaction rates as high as ninety four percent (Wilcox). The Google human resource management norm lays an elaborate stress on personal training and development of congenial atmosphere at work. Google believes in providing facilities to its employees in the way it provides services to its customers. Frequent employee surveys are held for monitoring the level of employee satisfaction and basic services like educational support are provided to the employees on a regular basis. The company also has to its credit a program that inducts new employees and aims at immersing young employees into the work culture of the organization from their first year of employment at Google. The company boasts of offices all over the globe, of which most are equipped with gyms and fitness infrastructure along with technology development that promotes green innovation. Google also hosts yearly fairs that promote science innovations amongst employees as well as innovators from across the world, especially young innovators with genuine ideas that can make a change for good.
Google constantly takes part in mergers and acquisitions and has taken risks throughout its existence to diversify their services and add products to their services. One must understand the risks taken by other companies to find a similar pattern between the working of Google and other Fortune 100 companies. Intuit another Fortune 100 was the first software based company to provide rebate to its customers on its products and received a lot of customer support and ranked high in customer satisfaction (Lacy and Greene). Google was itself one of the first few companies to deliver its IPOs to the public within the first few years of its initiation. However, the organization has taken brief and calculated risks that would benefit the organization in the long run. The current pattern also supports the fact that Google understands that the internet is the upcoming scenario and all of trade and commerce may shift a large portion of itself on the internet one day (Taylor). Acquisitions in the last years have been focused on adding functionality to the products and services in the online scenario as well as hardware related firms. With increased functionality and better understanding of services online Google is now able to develop and modify services that can help customers working online, making it possible for the organization to adopt to the upcoming culture of the internet information sharing, trading and free user development.
The company has faced difficulties at several points in time and has come out of them over the years. However, the organization has been criticized for several moves. The organization is alleged to provide personal information to the governments without user consent. Google is also under scrutiny for its strategies of tax avoidance as Google is one the few companies with a large market share in the internet yet it has the lowest payable tax amount per year. Other controversies include a number of complaints on the basis of humanitarian rights and functions that have been proven to be perpetrated from sources other than Google.
There are very few organizations that have survived through the years to become success stories and Intuit is one of them. As the organization completes its first decade in the coming year and after a tremendous number of innovations, mergers and acquisitions, Google has become one of the most sought out companies in terms of products, customer services, employment, partnership etc. in the United States. Google. is indeed an organization with all the attributes of a model organization. There are many stories related to the activities of Google. that can help young entrepreneurs to learn and develop their skills at the art of business management in terms of satisfaction both inside as well as outside the organization. There is much to learn from the working culture and success story of Google, with some credit to luck and the rest to sheer programming and engineering skills and innovative thought.
Works cited
Day, L. "How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing". ProPublica. 2013. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. Available at http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing
Lacy, S; Greene, J. "How to Face Off Against Microsoft". BusinessWeek. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. 2005.
Taylor, S. E. Inside Intuit: How the Makers of Quicken Beat Microsoft and Revolutionized an Entire Industry. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 1-59139-136-9. 2003
Wilcox, J. "The Dynamics of QuickBooks and Great Plains". eWeek Mircosoft Watch. Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. 2007.
