GOOGLE`S INNOVATIVE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Google`s Innovative Management Practices



Google`s Innovative Management Practices

Introduction

Just a few years back, the word Google existed as the name of a cartoon character (Barney Google) and possibly among the random phonemes mumbled by toddlers. Today, one would be hard-pressed to find a person who hasn't heard of the search engine that bears this name.

The word Google is a variant on the Googol (10[sup100]), a term coined by the 9-year-old nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, who asked him to think of a name for a very large number. The word Googolplex is the numeral that represents 10[supgoogol]. And perhaps not oddly, the word Googolplex is also now in play (Krantz, 2004).

Within a few short years Google has become the top search engine in the world and has earned the most esteemed privilege in contemporary pop culture - it has become a verb. It is interesting to note that Google is fighting in the courts to keep its name out of the dictionary, much as Xerox fights to keep its name from being used as an equivalent to photocopying. The legal concept in a nutshell: As the name becomes more commonly used, it becomes less of a brand, detracting from its proprietary nature. Google has also spawned products, projects, concepts, and imitations galore. It is safe to say that Google is not just an Internet search engine, but has become something of a phenomenon.

Google began in 1998 as an academic research project by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, who were then graduate students at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. It was not the first search engine, of course. Existing search engines were able to scan or "crawl" a large portion of the web, build an index, and then find pages that matched particular words. But they were less good at presenting those pages, which might number in the hundreds of thousands, in a useful way.

Google has the dubious honour of being one of the few stocks to have a "sell" rating so soon after its IPO. Thursday, Janco Partners analyst Martin Pyykkonen slapped a sell on the stock, saying that it should only be valued at $76 a share. He derived that stock price by measuring how much cash the company is expected to generate and the size of the risks it faces (Gallo, 2006).

Google`s commitment to innovation depends on everyone being comfortable sharing ideas and opinions. Every employee is a hands-on contributor, and everyone wears several hats. Because they believe that each Googler is an equally important part of their success, no one hesitates to pose questions directly to Larry or Sergey in the weekly all-hands ("TGIF") meetings - or spike a volley ball across the net at a corporate officer.

Google's Culture

Google is a high-energy, fast paced work environment. While the dress code might be “casual” the company attracts and retains some of the brightest minds in the technology industry. There is a work hard, play hard atmosphere. The Google Mountain View, CA headquarters (also known as ...