Google - A Saga of Innovation

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Authors: S.Ramakrishna & Sanjib Dutta,
Research Associate, Senior Faculty Member,
ICMR (IBS Center for Management Research).

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More than a Search Engine

Though Google is a Linux based search engine, it is supported by any browser i.e. Internet Explorer or Netscape. When Google entered the online search market, Yahoo was the market leader. Yahoo, the most popular portal, offered services such as news updates, search results, and email services. The founders of Google, Page and Brin, wanted to make Google an innovative search engine. Their relentless efforts towards that objective proved fruitful as, in a span of 5 years, Google became successful by placing itself ahead of Yahoo in the search engine market.

In the year 2001, Google even came up with search technology for Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled phones and other handheld devices. As years passed by, the company went adding new features for its users thus emerging as the world's no.1 search engine. Table I explains the list of features offered by Google. In 2002, Google pioneered the concept of Ad Words and Ad Sense, and thus created a sensation in the field of online advertising (Refer Exhibit II).

Table I
Google Web Search Features

• Book Search - New!	Use Google to search the full text of books.
• Cached Links	View a snapshot of each page as it looked when we indexed it.
• Calculator	Use Google to evaluate mathematical expressions.
• Definitions	Use Google to get glossary definitions gathered from various online sources.
• File Types	Search for non-HTML file formats including PDF documents and others.
• Froogle	To find a product for sale online, use Froogle - Google's product search service.
• I'm Feeling Lucky	Bypass our results and go to the first web page returned for your query.
• Local Search	Search for local businesses and services in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.
• Movies - New!	Use Google to find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you.
• News Headlines	Enhances your search results with the latest related news stories.
• PhoneBook	Look up U.S. street address and phone number information.
• Q&A - New!	Use Google to get quick answers to straightforward questions.
• Results Prefetching - New!	Makes searching in Firefox faster.
• Search By Number	Use Google to access package tracking information, US patents, and a variety of online databases.
• Similar Pages	Display pages that are related to a particular result.
• Site Search	Restrict your search to a specific site.
• Spell Checker	Offers alternative spelling for queries.
• Stock Quotes - New!	Use Google to get live stock quotes and information.
• Street Maps	Use Google to find U.S. street maps.
• Travel Information	Check the status of an airline flight in the U.S. or view airport delays and weather conditions.
• Weather - New!	Check the current weather conditions and forecast for any location in the U.S.
• Web Page Translation	Provides English speakers access to a variety of non-English web pages.
• Who Links To You?	Find pages that point to a specific URL.

Source: www.google.com

Exhibit II
Innovations at Google

Ad Words	Ad Words can be termed as a revolutionary concept in the history of Google. Ad Words is an online advertising program initiated by Google which places text ads and image ads on the search screen according to the key words (search term) given by the user. It even places public service ads. This program has been bringing in millions of dollars for Google from companies which placed ads on its site.
Ad Sense	Ad Sense acts more like an advertising agency in that it automatically places advertisements on sponsored links and other ads on sites which contain information related to the content in the sponsored links. Through Ad Sense, Google has been providing marketing services to many companies.

Source: ICMR (IBS Center for Management Research)

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