Google Strategy Case Study
Key Learning Outcomes
By the end of the case, students should be able to:
- Analyse the search engine industry and how the five forces have affected the biggest search engine in the world – Google, and rivals and the impact on industry structure, attractiveness, and profitability.
- Understand how Google has managed to defend against intense competition from Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo, etc. and the strategies it uses to create 'blue oceans' that are defensible, helping it capture and maintain competitive advantage.
- To apply strategy business models and frameworks such as Porters five forces to real company cases.
Analyse the search engine industry and how the five forces have affected Google and rivals.
- See also, Google Pestle & Swot Analysis 2019
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Google Inc. is an American search engine founded by Sergey and Larry Page in 1998. It is currently a subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc which currently controls a diverse range of businesses including YouTube, Dialogflow, AdMob, Google Japan, Android and Google environment among others.
With more than 86.2% of the global online search market, Google has become the biggest search engine in the world operating in 219 countries globally, ahead of competitors Bing, Yahoo and Baidu with 6.55%, 3.27% and 1.08% respectively as of 2018 (Statista 2018). Using Porters five forces analysis, this report analyses the impact of Porters five forces on the search engine industry and in Google in particular, to try and understand their role in Googles dominance of this market.