Careers at Google

Mission

Google aims to make information more accessible to internet users.

Through Android, Google aims to provide a stable mobile platform that offers users compatibility with huge numbers of third-party applications.

For the advertising partners who help generate its revenue, Google's mission is to provide an advertising channel with high rates of user response by targeting its users with adverts that are directly relevant to their individual interests and web searches.

Google aims to use its substantial advertising revenue to invest in the development of technologies that will shape the future.

History

Google was founded in 1996, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both still PhD students at Stanford, created a web search-engine that incorporated a key innovation. Until this point, all other search engines simply organised the results by the number of times the search phrases appeared on a given web page.

Page and Brin's innovation, which they called PageRank, was a new type of algorithm that ranked search results based on the number of links to them from other websites. This proved a much more effective search system that gave users more relevant results.

After settling on the name “Google”, they registered the domain name “Google.com” in 1997 and went online. In 1998 they received $100,000 in funding from Andy Bechtolshein, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who presciently saw the value inherent in the PageRank concept. With their headquarters still officially based in their friend's garage, they became an incorporated company and hired their first employee.

In 1999, Page and Brin, still grad students, feared Google might be distracting them too much from their studies and tried to sell the company to focus on their doctorates, but failed to get a good price. They instead sought, and quickly acquired more investment. Major early investors included venture capital firms Kleiner, Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and Sequoia Capital.

Google went public five years later in 2004, and by this time, Google's position as the word's most popular search engine had become firmly entrenched. After their IPO, they found themselves with a market capitalization of over $23 billion, and numerous employees and investors became overnight millionaires.

By 2014, after a decade that saw Google branch out into offering an increasingly wide range of online services such as Gmail and Google+, in addition to launching the hugely successful Android phone platform, it's market capitalization stood at $395 billion.

Google has not only purchased countless other successful web companies such as Youtube and DoubleClic, but also invested in an extremely wide range of projects outside of their main web businesses.

In 2015, a large corporate restructuring process saw Google restructure as a subsidiary of Alphabet. Google is responsible for the vast majority of Alphabet's profits, while its other subsidiaries are engaged in an extremely wide range of investment and development projects in such diverse fields as biotechnology, robotics, artificial technology, transport, satellite imaging and renewable energy.

Offering a huge array of products and services and with billions of monthly users, few, if any, tech companies can boast the same level of influence as Google. With over 55,000 employees globally, Google perpetually updates and improves the web-services it offers and continues to be a hugely well-resourced company that is immeasurably influential in the development of many technologies that may shape the future.

Business model of Google

Customer Segments

Google's key customer segments are internet users, advertisers, mobile users, developers and enterprises.

Advertisers pay Google for sponsored ads on web searches or on its AdSense network, enabling Google to offer most of its online features for free to regular internet users.

The popularity of Google's mobile platform Android means that mobile users are also a key customer segment. Developers who make apps for the android platform are another key segment, since they pay Google for the privilege of selling their products in the Google Play Store.

Value Proposition

Google is widely regarded as the world's best web search engine, making it a useful tool for a huge number of internet users. It also offers an impressive range of other services to web users for free.

For advertisers, Google represents a very effective and easy method of promotion. Google ads have very high rates of user interactivity because so many people use Google and the ads are normally relevant to searches the user has conducted. This is invaluable for anyone wishing to market their goods or services, giving Google a clear advantage over many traditional advertising channels.

Through Android, Google also provides a valuable platform for mobile developers to sell their apps, and for consumers to buy them.

Channels

Google's search engine websites, with different national versions for most countries on Earth remain a key channel for users, but over the years Google has branched out to offer a huge array of services through channels such as email system Gmail, social network Google+, and the Android phone platform. Google owns a large number of other large websites, most notably Youtube, which serve as further user channels.

Google also have a large sales force that focuses on selling their advertising services to businesses.

Customer Relationships

Google maintains close relationships with its advertising partners through the Google Network, a branch of Google's customer service department that helps businesses make the most out of Google's promotional services.

Google's relationship with its regular users is largely automated through its sophisticated online softtware.

It possesses a large, dedicated sales team for courting the business of larger clients.

Key Activities

Google employs over 20,000 software engineers around the world who are always developing new services while updating, improving and streamlining its existing ones.

Apart from continually investing in the development of its web services, Google invests very widely in developing a huge range of technologies. These activities include some intrepid “moon-shot” programs. These are generally hugely audacious projects in fields such as biotechnology and space travel. These investments are currently research, rather than profit oriented, but through these ambitious endeavours, Google hopes to pioneer new technologies that might eventually generate massive new revenue streams in the future. Since 2015, many of these ventures are no longer undertaken by Google itself, but by other subsidiaries of Alphabet Inc, although they are still largely funded by Google's ad revenues.

Google invests heavily in head-hunting and operates effectively as a talent vacuum, with recruitment teams dedicated to drawing in the best individuals from other industries and hiring the best graduates from the world's top universities.

Key Partners

A very large number of clients ranging from individuals to multinational corporations pay Google to help advertise their services and goods.

Google benefits from relationships with many distribution partners, such as many web browsers that feature Google Toolbar.

Mobile phone manufacturers are an increasingly significant partner for Google as the Android eco-system continues to expand. Google offers phone manufacturers an operating system for their phones that is compatible with the wide range of apps available the Google Play store.

Payment processors are another key partner, assisting with the sale of apps in the Play Store.

Huge numbers of websites bring Google revenue by using Adsense, which places Google's sponsored links on their websites. They are also key partners, generating a significant portion of Google's total revenues.

Key Resources

The key resource that enabled Google to outperform its early rivals as a search-engine was the ingenious but relatively simple PageRank, but since then the Google platform has developed to contain a variety of hugely sophisticated algorithms that enable it to function as both a better search-engine and a better advertising platform than its rivals. In fact, Google has created a huge variety of software and IT architecture which continue to be valuable assets.

Its massive data centres are a hugely valuable physical asset. It owns dozens around the world which it uses to, among other thing, process the billion web searches its users conduct every day. These data centres are some of the largest in the world and are a key resource that is utterly essential for Google's day to day running.

It's brand is also a huge asset. Google is a ubiquitous feature in billions of people's experience of the internet and is by far the most visited site on the internet. The ubiquity of the Google brand is illustrated in how the word “google” has become a common verb – to “google” something is a common phrase that everyone understands.

Cost Structure

Google's vast data centres have very large running costs. Google spends heavily to maintain and expand them to meet the huge demand for server space created by its ever-increasing volume of traffic.

Googles invests heavily in the maintenance of its vast IT architecture, hiring thousands of world-class programmers, and putting them to work on not only the maintenance of its current services but also on the research and design of new products.

Google has to pay Traffic Acquisition Costs to its Adsense partners, in return for them directing traffic to their sponsored ads. This is a large expenditure.

Google also invests heavily in its large marketing and customer support departments.

Revenue Streams

Google continues to generate over 90% of its revenue from advertising, although the Android ecosystem is proving to be increasingly lucrative. Ad revenue comes from sponsored links on Google searches, but also from a wide range of websites who subscribe to Google's Adsense service.

Our team

Larry Page,
Co-founder – Google Inc. / CEO – Alphabet Inc.

info: As the co-founder of Google, Larry Page invented PageRank, the technology that gave them the edge over their early competitors. He was CEO until 2001, when Eric Schmidt assumed the role. Page returned as CEO in 2011 only to hand over to Sundar Pichai when he restructured Google and became CEO of its parent company Alphabet.

Sergey Brin,
Co-founder – Google Inc. / President – Alphabet Inc.

info: Sergey co-founded Google with Larry Page while both doctoral computer science students at Stanford. Brin was a key developer of Google's early data mining systems and has been a key player at Google since its inception. He is currently president of Google's parent company, Alphabet.

Eric Schmidt,
Executive Chairman – Alphabet Inc.

info: Holding a Ph.D in computer science from Berkeley, Eric Schmidt worked at Sun Microsystems and as CEO at Novell before joining Google. In 2001 he was picked by Page and Brin to manage their business. He was CEO from 2001 to 2009. As the executive chair of Alphabet, Schmidt remains a key part of Google's management team.

Sundar Pichai,
CEO – Google Inc.

info: Sundar holds an M.S in Material Sciences in Engineering from Stanford and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He worked in product management at McKinsey & Company before joining Google in 2004. He initially worked in product management and innovation and eventually oversaw large projects such as the release of Android. When CEO and founder Larry Page restructured the company and became CEO of Alphabet in 2014, Pichai was placed at the helm of Google.