Google: Local resources

III - Local modifications

III – 1 Local resources

Google's teams are always composed of several nationalities as shown for their office in Ireland Official Google Blog: Dublin go bragh it however request local personnel in order to fit the best to the culture. When doing partnerships Google has as well no choice than using the local people used in the other company. Google hires only high skills people(speaking at least 3 languages is needed).

Google: From Geocentrism to Regionalism: How Google gets rank first?

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.

Google: Classification of an International company by qualitative features(EPRG)

II – 1 Classification of an International company by qualitative features(EPRG)

I would qualify Google as a Geocentric company(the same service for all the world). There are however some slight modifications made to their service which could make think that Google is acting as well as a Regiocentric company, at least on some marketing aspects.

The reason which drove me to this conclusion is that Google managers are recruited from all over the world and the power is centralized in the United States. As said in Google's presentation they opened in 2003 in Dublin a location for regional operations outside the U.S. It has been designed to serve Google customers across multiple time zones and languages spanning Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Taking in account that Europe has a very strong addiction to Google I may think that Google has in fact two center of decisions(one for America and one for the rest of the world)

However Google has a so huge amount of offices in the United States which make me think that the final decision are taking in the United States which include a hierarchy among those centers of decisions.

Google: Google's position in the world nowadays as a search engine

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.

Google: Google international expansion

I – 2 Google international expansion

In January 1996 a 24 year-old PhD student called Larry Page studying at the University of Stanford was looking for a theme for his thesis.
Encouraged by his supervisor he studied the following topic “exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web“ working in collaboration with another student called Sergey Brin.
To make it simple, it is from this work and collaboration which will came up “Google Inc”(officially created in September the 7th 1998).
Two months later Google is already included in the Top 100 of world websites of PC magazine( a reference in the United States for computers).
Even if Google is formerly a web based application in English it is a worldwide service available on the Internet for all. As his creator(Larry Page) said "Google's search engine has always had strong global appeal,".
Here is a non exhaustive list of Google abroad activities.
Year 1999: first non engineer employee hired.
Year 2000: Google provides an interface in several languages: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Year 2001: Google is now available in 26 languages and open his first international office, in Tokyo. A partnership with Universo Online (UOL)(the largest online service and Internet provider in Latin America) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans
Google first international office is sat up in Tokyo in 2001.
Year 2002: Google is available in 72 languages, partnership with AOL and first office in Australia in Sidney.
Year 2003: several national acquisitions to extend Google services which at the end extend as well the world services abroad of Google, for example the blog services “Blogger”. Dublin became the first location for Google's regional operations outside the U.S.
Year 2004: more than 100 Google domain names are available. Google opens new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. R&D center opened in Tokyo.
Year 2005: the famous Google Maps application is release for Europe. New R&D center opens this time in China. First offices in Mexico and Argentina.
Year 2006: several other acquisitions to extend their services with for each of them translation in several languages.
Year 2007: Partnership with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile Telecommunication carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China. Sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda.
Year 2008: Series of acquisitions and translations of other Google services.

As we just saw in ten years Google developed a lot of International marketing structures from simple representation offices to R&D centers to complex partnerships. I did not mentioned it but Google acquired several companies(more than 50). The purpose of these acquisitions was to extend their range of services which are then translated in order to be internationally exportable. I however did not find until now an acquisition of another search engine. Google seems to prefer the partnership(the company keep her brand but use Google, the best example is AOL).

Google: Google nowadays

I - Company Introduction

Google Inc has recently celebrated his ten-year birthday(September the 7^th 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.

Google: Table of contents

Table of contents

I - Company introduction
I – 1 Google nowadays
I – 2 Google international expansion
I – 3 Google's position in the world nowadays as a search engine
II – International Marketing
II – 1 Classification of an International company by qualitative features(EPRG)
II – 2 From Geocentrism to Regionalism: How Google gets rank first?
III – Local modifications
III – 1 Local resources
III – 2 Local restrictions
III – 3 Specific cultures and localized market requirements
III – 4 Anti-globalisation trends
III – 4.1 Latin America
III – 4.2 Middle East
III – 4.3 China
III – 4.4 Russia and ex-soviet countries
III – 5 Types of internationalization
III – 6 Google's degree of internationalization
III – 7 The overall motivation of internationalization
III – 8 Drivers of internationalization
IV – Conclusion
V – Sources