Google Inc.: A strategic approachHistorySergey Brin and Larry Page met in the spring of 1995 during a meeting at Stanford University. Between January 1996 and December 1997, they created “BackRub”, the precursor to the Google search engine. The goal was to better organize a huge amount of data on the Internet. Eventually, the name was changed to "Google" to signify the immense amount of information that resided on the Internet. Google is derived from the word googol, referring to 1 followed by 100 zeros. Brin and Page incorporated Google in 1998, just nine years ago, with $1 million from family and investors. The quality of Google's search technology has attracted a growing number of users. Many businesses had Google as their primary web search engine. It was not until 2001 that the company became profitable thanks to its excellent financial performance. From there, they sold 19.6 million shares, raising $1.7 billion. Today, Google has continued to expand from being a web search company to offering a growing range of services. It now holds more than 50% of the total search market. In 2005, Google incorporated Google Payment Corp. » because it works on a PayPal-type payment system. They recently launched a web-only video search engine that allows users to view videos without going to the host's site. Google was rumored to be considering competing more directly with Microsoft in the areas of Internet browsing and operating systems. (Source: Fred David's Strategic Management, 11th edition, pages 34 and 35). engine technology. In order to compete with other large companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo, Google must develop a strategy for different...... middle of paper ....... Google could have taken many other paths. An alternative was to create another company, part of the Google group, to work with other types of unrelated or related products, as well as another marketing consulting company. Google is very good at marketing, they have started selling ads, so having a marketing consulting agency might be a good way to go. For this they already have the experience and it does not involve so much money. This would perhaps be a choice for the future; I believe Google made the right choice with this strategy. Sources: • Google.como http://www.google.com/corporate/index.html • Fred R. David's Strategic Management Pg. 34 – 48 Case of cohesion. • http://www.dailyspeculations.com/google- paper-ellison.html• http://www.cybergrain.com/archives/2004/12/googles_vision.html