G o o g l e Inc.

1. Google Inc. Global Operations "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

2. Facts about Google • Founded, 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page & Sergey Brin • Google is headquartered in Mountain View, CA in Silicon Valley • Google has offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia • Google is a top web property in all major global markets • IPO of 19,605,052 shares on August 19, 2004 • acquired digital mapping company Keyhole in 2004, and launched Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005 • In 2006, acquired YouTube 60 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute • In June 2011, introduced the Google+ project •  If Google were a country, it would be bigger than Cyprus or Bahrain, based on GDP

3. Google has more than 70 offices in more than 40 countries“The need for information crosses all borders” google.com

4. 7 Challenges of Global Expansion • 1. distance, language, and cultural differences with foreign agencies and governments • When Google opens data centers and other facilities overseas, it must adapt in order to train employees and relate to foreign consumers and governments

5. 2. developing products and services in different languages and for different cultures • Most of Google’s products are web-based so the main challenge here is putting google search and other products in another language.

6. 3. Longer payment cycles in some countries • Just as it says…companies have to make some small adjustments and understand the timing of cash inflows and outflows in different systems

7. 4. Credit risk and higher payment fraud • There is always a degree of risk when operating outside of the home country…but then again there is always a risk at home as well

8. 5. Legal and regulatory restrictions and differences • Google has had to adjust in many small ways over time as well as a few major ways i.e. “Operation Aurora”

9. 6. Exchange rate fluctuations • As we have learned this semester, it is important to know that the monetary system is stable is the country you mean to do business.

10. 7. potential adverse tax consequences • In the case of Google, I found one tax consequence which was actually positive in the case of Finlands’ government offering lower energy tax rates to attract data companies like Google.

11. Google’s Strategy • Google's uses an acquisition strategy only when it can't produce the product better in-house • Google opened its first international office in Tokyo in August 2001 • October 2004, Google opened an office in Dublin, Ireland, staffed by multilingual personnel to service customers across many time zones and languages ehow.com

12. Strategy Cont. • The acquisition strategy has fostered International growth • Google is developing a social network called Google+ • it allows Internet users to "like" a search result in the same way as they can "like" a Facebook page • This provides “fast, accurate and easy-to-use service" for everyone regardless of their country • This also provides Google with very valuable consumer data ehow.com

13. 3 pillars of Google’s success • Flattening – eliminating obstacles between ads and eyeballs • Expanding – Creating as many opportunities or platforms as possible to reach its customer • Mining – allows Google to understand and target users very efficiently. visionmobile.com

14. A good analogy is cars and fuel -If the price of fuel goes down, the demand for cars will increase. -The services that Google provides are the complements in this case (the fuel) to the core advertisement business. -The price of the service is reduced (in most cases to zero) to indirectly push up the demand for the core product, being ads. visionmobile.com

15. Googleand Operation Aurora • January 13, 2010, Google Inc. announced that operators, from within China, had hacked into their Google China operation • There was speculation that 'insiders' had been involved in the attack • ‘Thought to be a concerted Chinese industrial espionage operation aimed at getting 'high-tech information to jump-start China’s economy' • In March 2010 Google subsequently decided to cease offering censored results in China, leading to the closing of its Chinese operation wikipedia.com

16. Issues in Europe • The EU is examining complaints of Google demoting links to their sites in search results… • “Though it's unlikely, one worst-case scenario would be the EU forcing Google to reveal why it ranks some search results higher compared with others.” businessweek.com

17. Finland bloomberg.com

18. Finland • Google recently injected FDI of 608 million into expansion of its data center in Finland • Finland has developed economy and infrastructure with a stable electricity grid as well as the chilly climate which helps save on equipment cooling costs • The construction will create 800 engineering and building jobs • The data center’s staff count will also increase • The Finnish government is reducing energy tax collected from companies investing in data storage starting next yearto promote FDI in the data storage industry bloomberg.com

19. “If Google was a Guy” “Everything you ask Google sounds a lot more stupid when you actually ask Google.” <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YuOBzWF0Aws" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

20. Challenge/Conclusion • I thought the biggest challenge of this presentation was how to pose a company with so many international locations and operations into a concise and focused presentation.

21. Webpages used • http://www.google.com/about/company/ • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuOBzWF0Aws • http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2010/tc20100224_084405.htm • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google • http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/11/flatten-expand-mine-the-three-pillars-of-googles-strategy/ • http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-04/google-taps-video-growth-with-608-million-finnish-investment.html