Google

Google was recently named the best company to work for by Fortune magazine in 2008, has been showing an enormous growth for the past years and seems to do everything right without a single mistake. Of course they don’t, but what’s their secret to success?

What’s right with Google business model?

There’s a lot of hype around Google and when you hear people talking about this company, it’s usually good things. One critical thing Google understood is that if you want to be a a successful company, you have to get the most talented and creative engineers available. To hire young talented and creative engineers, you have to have a good reputation because working for an ethical company is usually something important. It’s a really hard thing to get the support of the geek community because you have to build quality stuff. For this geek community it’s usually all or nothing: Either your product is the best thing since sliced bread (Google) or it’s the worst crap ever (Microsoft). Google business model is based on that: They do great products and make them available to the public at no charges. It’s also extremely easy to develop for Google applications and Google provides a good SDK so that anyone can start building applications using Google’s framework. You’ve probably seen a lot of websites online using some Google Web services and that’s the beauty of it: It’s so easy to integrate with what you’re building as a developer.

Google also understood too well what the Web is all about and it was at the same time the first failure for Microsoft. The Internet is taking more place than ever and there’s more and more applications that are “web-based”. It’s particularly great because all tools/Web applications are platform independent, meaning they can run on any operating system as long as it’s running a decent browser. Google did put a huge bet on the Internet and it paid! They don’t have a lot of desktop tools (even if they’re increasing their desktop solutions) and most of what they offer is on the Web. Google brought Web 2.0 where it should be and continues to bring it even further. They’re having a lot of success with their web applications because it’s not everybody that wants to run Windows but you still want great applications available wherever you are, on whatever operating system.

Google is gaining a lot of respect from powers user also because they love open source. A company that support open source is usually well respected among the community because it’s free stuff and everyone can collaborate. That’s what the Internet is all about: Share and Collaborate. They also actively support alternative solutions like Firefox instead of going with the big Redmond giant. That decision pays a lot because people have the impression they are different from most people.

Also, what helps Google stay competitive and bring new creative ideas is their 20% free time policy. That’s one of Google’s core policy and it states that 20% of your job time can be used for “personal projects”. That’s how Google’s best ideas are created. You employ intelligent persons and give them 20% of their time to create out of the box creative ideas: It pays. Now, who wants to work for Google? Everyone in the computer industry because Google is setting the standards. Oh, there’s also place for your creativity!

What helps Google a lot is that they’re seen as a breath of fresh air in an industry that has been dominated for too long by a single company. They also focus on the end user instead of trying to conquer the big businesses. Their goal is to bring traffic so they can sell advertisements and who’s surfing the web? End users. They offer a rich end user experience with a really large offering of awesome online products.

Google is also getting a lot of respect by participating in events not necessarily organized by Google. One of the recent example is the Google Lunar X Prize.

Google Vs. Microsoft

We can’t do a complete Google Vs. Microsoft because they don’t always compete in the same industry. Microsoft is a big business solutions provider (VS Studio, Microsoft Office, Sharepoint, etc.) and Google isn’t in that industry. I’m mostly focusing on what Google and Microsoft are competing for: The Web industry.

In fact, the focus of Microsoft on the business industry and not the end user was a big mistake. There’s still money to do with the end user, but not by selling operating systems. Money is done by bringing traffic and Google proved it because they focus a lot on providing useful web services for end users.

Microsoft didn’t do anything wrong. They just followed their 1990’s business plan instead of believing in what the web could do for them. In the last 10 years, the computer industry has changed a lot and this is mainly due to the enormous growth of the Internet. That’s what Microsoft didn’t see coming and what Google saw. The Web was an awesome tool showing great potential but you had to have a vision to see it where it is today. Google did put all their efforts in building for the Web and it’s the core of their success right now. Microsoft is still catching up on Google’s internet services. The Internet is what made Google king and Microsoft a 2nd runner.

The other thing killing Microsoft is that they don’t support the open source community a lot. They are slowly changing this because it is killing them. They’re now offering limited versions of their softwares for free, so you can use them for personal projects.

Another thing hurting Microsoft is that they’re usually forcing their users to use Microsoft only technologies, limiting you if you’re not running 100% Microsoft stuff or if you’re running Linux/Mac OS X. Microsoft has to focus a lot more on the web and that’s what they’re doing just now. People are looking for more cross operating system solutions and the operating system will soon become a matter of preference; it won’t determine what you can run and not run.

Microsoft is having some problems getting new talents because these new talents tend to go for Google instead. That’s where the importance of having the support of the geek community helps. Microsoft has a really bad reputation: Even if they’re working in it, they’re seen as the big evil software company, while Google is seen as the cool, young and creative technology company. I personally don’t hate Microsoft but I do agree that Google seems to be doing everything better.

Conclusion

I personally don’t hate Microsoft. I think they’re a great company but they have to clean their reputation because it’s mostly what’s killing them. They also have to bring their Web 2.0 applications to the same level of Google’s applications.

Google is just a breath of fresh air right now. Let’s enjoy it until the administration board gets too greedy.