IV - Conclusion
Even and it is true that we could have some things to say regarding how Google targeted Asia which remain until now the place where Google have the most difficulties to enter, we cannot deny that Google did an incredible work in terms of international marketing.
In ten years it has covered almost all the planet with more than 60% of the market(and it is growing year after year). We could even think at least for Europe that most of the users are Google dependent.
His secret is coming from a mere idea of his creators Larry Page and Sergey Brin(both engineers): a very simple tool and easy to use.
It was that simple and that easy that making it available to the all world seemed to have been a kid game(easy to translate and to export through the net).
We however still have some questions tags regarding his implementation in Asia and moreover on four countries:
Why is it facing a so fierce competition in China, South Korea and Japan whereas it is the only three countries to which it accepts to make a specific customization?
Why his main competitor is far better than him in this area?
| Rank | Japan | South Korea | China | Russia |
| 1st | Yahoo: 64% | Naver: 77% | Baidu: 60,9% | Yandex or Mail.ru: 47,61% |
| 2nd | Google: 29,6% | Daum: 10,8% | Google: 27% | Google 25,67% |
| 3rd | Microsoft: 2,8% | Yahoo: 4,4% | Sogou: 3,1% | Rambler 12,17% |
| 4th | Others: 3,6% | Google: 1,7% | Yahoo: 2,4% | Mail.ru 5,53% |
| 5th |
| Others: 6,1% | Others: 6,6% | Others: 9,02% |
III – 6 Google's degree of internationalization:
Google has the following figures for the repartition of his offices around the world:
Northern America: 23
Europe: 22
Asia/Pacific: 15
Latin America: 3
Middle East: 5
Total=68
From those figures we could calculate the “International workforce ratio”: ((offices in the world-offices in the USA)/Total number of offices)*100= (48/68)*100= 70%.
However I think a more interesting ratio can be calculated. In fact a company can have a very high degree of internationalization but dividing his efforts in an unequal way.
For me we should take in account the degree of internationalization with the market itself. You can be very internationalized but being bad internationalized because you are in some places where the market is not.
| Continent | Number of offices | % of offices | Perfect offices number | Perfect % of offices | World Internet users |
| Africa | 1 | 1,50% | 2 | 3,00% | 3,50% |
| South America | 2 | 3,00% | 5 | 7,30% | 7,10% |
| Central America | 1 | 1,50% | 1 | 1,50% | 2,40% |
| North America | 23 | 33,80% | 12 | 17,64% | 17,00% |
| Middle East | 3 | 4,40% | 2 | 3,00% | 2,90% |
| Europe | 23 | 33,80% | 18 | 26,50% | 26,30% |
| Asia | 13 | 19,11% | 27 | 39,70% | 39,50% |
| Oceania | 2 | 3,00% | 1 | 1,50% | 1,40% |
|
| 68 | 100,11% | 68 | 100,14% | 100,10% |
As we can see here we have the repartition of Google's offices around the world and the % of Internet users around the world. The perfect offices number show how these offices should have been allocated.
In total: 1+3+11+1+5+14+1=36 offices could have been allocated better.
1+3+24=27 offices are lacking.
Google has then 41 offices which are well internationalized it equals to 68-27=41; 41/68= 60%.
A such rate signifies that Google is covering more than half of the planet and it is doing it in the more or less the right way...60% is strangely correlated to Google market shares around the world, is that a coincidence?
As a comparison his main competitor Yahoo has the following situation:
| Continent | Number of offices | % of offices | Perfect offices number | Perfect % of offices | World Internet users |
| Africa | 0 | 0,00% | 1 | 3,50% | 3,50% |
| South America | 2 | 6,90% | 2 | 6,90% | 7,10% |
| Central America | 1 | 3,50% | 1 | 3,50% | 2,40% |
| North America | 4 | 13,80% | 5 | 17,24% | 17,00% |
| Middle East | 0 | 0,00% | 1 | 3,50% | 2,90% |
| Europe | 9 | 31,03% | 8 | 27,60% | 26,30% |
| Asia | 12 | 41,40% | 12 | 41,40% | 39,50% |
| Oceania | 1 | 3,50% | 1 | 3,50% | 1,40% |
|
| 29 | 100,13% | 31 | 107,14% | 100,10% |
As we can see Yahoo allocated his workforce quite differently from Google. Yahoo focused on Asia whereas Google put most of his effort in North America.
This example has been chosen to show that it is a good thing to be internationalized but it is better if you are intelligently internationalized. If you put your effort in some countries where the market does not exist(this is the case for Australia) you will get nothing.
www.google.com.ar/
Google Argentina has exactly the same interface as hundreds of others countries Google home pages
As you can see a second block as been added. This block looking very similar to his competitor in this country: “Yahoo Japan”
Google China looks like his Korean fellow but without the block above. Animations are however still here.
Here for Google Korea two blocks have been added. The most relevant one is the one below. By passing the mouse on one of the color point an animation came out.
It is quite incredible to see and to discover that a service such as Google(only one page)which has to modify his interface in order to fit at best some specific markets.
II – 2 From Geocentrism to Regionalism: How Google gets rank first?
Google.com and it will be for sure a surprise for you is not the most visited search engine on the web, it is in fact Yahoo.com according to Alexa web.
Here is the ranking of the 50 most visited websites in the world for 2008 filtered with the keywords Yahoo and Google:
| Rank | Site |
| 1 | Www.yahoo.com |
| 2 | Www.google.com |
| 10 | Www.yahoo.co.jp |
| 14 | Www.google.co.in |
| 15 | Www.google.de |
| 19 | Www.google.fr |
| 21 | Www.google.co.uk |
| 26 | Www.google.co.br |
| 29 | Www.google.it |
| 34 | Www.google.es |
| 35 | Www.google.co.jp |
| 42 | Www.google.com.mx |
As we can see Google.com is not the first one it is in fact Yahoo.com and Yahoo.co.jp is taking the next position ranked in the list.
What makes in fact Google being the first search engine in the world is the accumulation of his domain names and the translation of his home pages in almost all the languages of the world.
This is in fact a very young and simple strategy that Google adapted here. One year and a half after his creation Google was already available in 13 languages.
Why at that time his competitors did not do the same?(Actually only Yahoo survived to the Google's wave during the last decade). Mainly because his main world competitor: Yahoo has an interface which is too heavy to translate and need dedicated people(such as local
people) to make the updates. Restricted it Yahoo to a mere webpage as Google do Yahoo would have changed all his policy.
Google did in fact what no other search engines did: gathering minorities.
Nowadays Google customized his interface for more than 138 countries. The only countries which are not included yet and which are for the biggest one:
Bhoutan, Birmania, Surinam, Burkina Faso, Yemen, Togo, Cameroon, Chyprus, Sierra Leone, Syria, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Gabon.
Google's service is customized for almost all the world(including islands and countries such as Groenland which has around 50,000 inhabitants).
Google is going far further than touching each country individually it goes as well within regions, as an example it is providing a customized interface to several regions in France:
Here France has been divided especially for five regions:
- Bretagne: http://www.google.com/intl/br/
- Corse: http://www.google.com/intl/co/
- Langue d'oc:http://www.google.com/intl/oc/
- Catalogne:http://www.google.com/intl/ca/
- Pays Basques: http://www.google.com/intl/eu/
We can ask us the question: is it really important to divide so deeply a specific country?
Taking in account that such minorities(Bretagne and Corse) are very proud to be what they are, good chances that they will move from .com to .com/intl/br/ or .com/intl/co/ in order to have a recognition(for example France government is not recognizing those five regions for political reasons). Now we should ask us what they will chose between Google which care of them and provide them a dedicated interface and Yahoo which provide them only the national one(when it has it)?
I unfortunately do not have the Internet traffic for those regions but I evaluate this strategy(recognizing minorities) as a very interesting one. Very hard to do for other sectors but for this one I have high presumptions that it works very well.
As we all know it is very hard to be a pure Geocentric company and local modifications are often needed in order to enter in a specific market: Google is not an exception to this rule.
I – 3 Google's position in the world nowadays as a search engine
In order to introduce better Google's strategy abroad we should have a close look at Google's situation today.
I made a map by analyzing results coming from Alexa Web http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 (data center of the most visited websites in the world country by country).
The concept of this map is the following I put in evidence by one different color the leading search engine in each country. As I wrote previously Google is the most used search engine in the world with around 60% of the world requests. We could think then quickly that Google is used in majority by all countries around the world. I however have strong beliefs that the use of Search engines is not link to rationality(better technology is winning) but in fact is driven by cultures.
On the following map the regions in white mean no data from these countries:
As we can see there are not many search engines in the world. Moreover three of them are in a very fragile situation: Microsoft, Seznam and Leit.is(these two last ones will probably not passed the next year, an auction is currently made on Seznam and some web marketing research companies already showed that Leit.is has been doubled by Google).
As you can see Google has almost an entire control on the Americas(we saw previously that Google made a very intelligent partnership with the Latin America leader) except on the Caribbean area(too many small countries, too isolated. According to World Stats this area does not represent a lot of users.
Africa is what I will qualified of the continent of flip-flop regions. Internet is not very developed in each of these countries it is then hard to attribute a search engine leader. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm. In fact only Nigeria seems to be a problem for Google in Africa.
In Middle East I would say that the same problem which occurs with Iran.
And then what I think is the most interesting part is the Asian Wall which is composed of several different competitors and reasons why they are better implemented: better competitor's strategy(Yahoo), national security(Baidu in China), boycott of American services? (Mail.ru in Russia and ex-sovietik regions), foreigner search engine do not fit with Korean way of searching the information(Naver in South Korea).
Even if Internet and technology made easier the exportation of products and services abroad it does not mean that it can be automatically made.
In order to be world used Google will have far more to do than being the best service for search engines.
I - Company Introduction
Google Inc has recently celebrated his ten-year birthday(September the 7th 2008). What a great opportunity to study how a simple research project became one of the world biggest growing company in all time!
I – 1 Google nowadays
Google is the most used search engine engine in the world with more than 60% of the world requests made on search engines.
Google is also a company providing a large range of services(exactly 149), his more recent ones(the web browser: Chrome) make it now compete with firms such as Microsoft.
Some example of Google services: mails, blogs, videos hosting, companies ads, maps, pictures hosting, websites analytics...
During the last 4 semesters Google generated nearly 20 billions dollars of revenue with a net profit of 4,85 billions. As a comparison for the same period Microsoft(created 33 years ago) got 60 billions dollars and a net profit of 17,6 billions.
The value of Google is nowadays estimated to 142 billions of dollars. In the High-Tech sector only three companies have a better quotation: Microsoft, IBM (created 97 years ago) and Apple (32 years ago).
Google is physically present in 33 countries around the world with 68 offices.
To understand how this company could have been so successful internationally let's study his internationalization steps during the last decade.
By Ronan CHARDONNEAU
« Select a company/ an industrial area and describe/ evaluate their international marketing context and concepts ».
II – 1.2 Microsoft Windows: Operating System
Microsoft Windows is the famous Operating System(cf. Glossary) which made the success of Microsoft.
This product is dominating the market of computers(desktop and laptops) with an incredible 90% of market shares(2008).
Economist are speaking about a monopole of the market. This situation is moreover enforced by the fact that his two main competitors are not really playing on the same market: Mac OS(from Apple) seems to be focus on a niche and Linux(specialized in Web Server Operating System) is more targeting advanced users.
In order to understand better this monopole we have also to take into consideration that most of the computers sold in the world are sold with Microsoft Windows. In customers mind it is even sometimes unthinkable(unfortunately for its competitors) that a computer cannot be sold without Microsoft Windows.
I - Introduction
Who never heard about Microsoft? The successful company which started by the work made by a young student called Bill GATES who in some decades became the richest man in the world.
Microsoft is like we want it or not a part of our life. Nowadays it is almost impossible to live without technology. Behind it there is a terminal or more commonly called a computer which is in 90-95% of the cases running by Microsoft products.
It could seems at the first sight that studying the distribution channels of such a company is a work without an end but actually it is not.
The reason is that Microsoft makes most of its benefits through only two products: the Operating System Microsoft Windows and the Microsoft Suite Office.
Studying the distribution channels of such software within the distribution policy course at the University of Kassel is a great opportunity to discover the position of a company which has a monopole on a market. It shows the rare case when a company can affords ways of distribution that other competitors do not have or cannot use in order to keep leader's position and to keep it for a very long time.
I chose as well to introduce another product: the Microsoft's search engine “Live Search” which help me for my personal research on my master thesis and also to show distribution channels of new products which are nowadays very fashionable: the free web applications.
Table of contents
II - 1.1 Microsoft corporation
II – 1.3 Microsoft Live Search: Search engine
III – 1.1 Distribution channel for Microsoft Windows
III – 1.1.1 Individual distribution
III – 1.1.1.1 Strengths and weaknesses
III – 1.1.2 Included with the purchase of the hardware
III – 1.1.2.1 Strengths and weaknesses
III – 1.2 Distribution channel for Live Search
III – 1.2.1 Strong points/Weak points
by Ronan CHARDONNEAU
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