The dominant search engine on the internet is Google Inc. Google was founded on September 4, 1998, and it immediately transformed the Web and the search engine business. Google generates income in various ways, with advertising as the main source of its profits. Google overtook Yahoo as the most popular search engine two years after the company’s founding and started to take the market by storm. Access to Google has always been free for users, and its two main sources of income over the past ten years have been selling its technology and running advertisements. AdWords, a division of Google dedicated to advertising, enables customers looking to promote their businesses to “make ads and select keywords, which are words or phrases linked to the business(Chirac & Li, 2022). Google’s expansion into the French, German, and Japanese search engine markets sparked concerns and ultimately bred fear of American power in those countries. Due to this mistrust, some French businesses filed lawsuits alleging copyright violations and won their cases in the end.
Experiences with Google in France, Germany, and Japan Google has encountered a wide range of difficulties in attempting to grow worldwide in an effort to gain market share(Chirac & Li, 2022, p.188). Many cultures have viewed Google as a threat to their cultural values and customs. This is due to the fact that by granting Google total freedom in their countries, they will be able to impose the Anglo-Saxon viewpoint on a variety of topics, including history, pop culture, and even style. Google is rightly viewed as a threat to some cultures’ traditions and values by those nations. With the world wide web’s growth, Google has gained popularity in tandem, which has evolved into an increasingly significant aspect of everyone’s daily lives. This is because Google can provide simple, quick, and relevant content. One of the world’s technological leaders, Google Company’s effective search engines let consumers access information on the internet. Due to its superiority to the competition as a search engine, Google immediately attracted the online community’s attention. This came after a great deal of work was put into marketing their products and securing a sizable global market. Due to the numerous dangers and difficulties associated with this area of work, Google has felt the need to develop fresh approaches to meet any obstacles.
Issues
Before going international, Google failed to perform due diligence and lacked a local partner.
Google’s entry into France, Germany, and Japan was a big failure due to a lack of research and development. Lack of collaboration with a local organization resulted in failed attempts to overcome cultural barriers, which caused numerous errors.
Google started out by swiftly expanding in France by providing a direct line of communication to French companies. Google started focusing its advertising campaigns on certain languages, nations, and keywords. Google quickly surpassed other search engines in France and started to provide services in several regional French dialects(Jeanneney et al.,2008). One of the major errors Google made was studying its rivals rather than planning for potential setbacks. According to case 5, companies looking to compete with Google in the search market saw Europe’s patchwork of languages and cultures as a benefit when introducing demand for a regionally targeted search. In response, the governments of France and Germany announced plans to create their own national search engines. The President of France, Jacques Chirac, and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, have endorsed the Quaero project, which will be superior to the current web search engines.
Establishing a Local Search Engine.
People can use the internet to input and submit data to Google’s search engine. In return, the user would get search results tailored to their requirements. Once the input is received, web crawlers look through trillions of pages and establish links between keywords in the user’s data and published data on the Web. Their PageRank technology ranks these pages based on the quantity and popularity of other websites that link to them. In this approach, the user receives relevant and popular results(Jeanneney et al.,2008). The search engine made a sizable profit by selling its innovations to other websites and selling advertisements on its websites. The most common choice has, for the most part, been to build a local search engine within a nation. This is frequently encouraged by the provincial government, which manages and controls the search engine as it sees proper. In an effort to deter people from using the Google search engine, they attempted to launch the Quaero local search engine in France in partnership with Germany.
Germany attempted to build its own search engine, Theseus, after deciding not to join the combined search engine with France. According to Chirac & Li, 2022, p.188, As part of its initiative to create unique search and information retrieval capabilities, Japan started “The Grand Journey Project.” Google’s ventures into other countries have thus far been terrifying. Since then, they have spent excessive money suing each other in foreign courts for issues including copyright violations, brand infringement, and licensing restrictions. Google will need to gather more data regarding a foreign market they might be interested in soon. If Google undertakes the required research and analysis, it can avoid many issues it has faced in recent years. France now has access to Google. With 10.38 percent of all Internet users in France visiting Google France, it is the most frequently visited website in the country. With 6.83 percent of French people using it, Facebook is the second-most-visited website in France (Chirac & Li, 2022, p.198).
Challenges
Threats from the Government.
Some governments viewed Google as a threat to “Americanization ” or a potential threat to the right to free expression. In this instance, each country had created its own strategy to counteract Google’s supremacy over the search engine market by creating its search engines. First, Germany and France created a “joint venture” called Quaerro, short for “superior search firm.” Germany also created Theseus, which was recuperating from the E.U., while Japan produced its modestly sized, government-sponsored search tool, which is still in use today. Government funding was provided to each of them. Government-sponsored browsers undoubtedly pose a threat. No matter how big or small, the government can obstruct your progress if it so chooses. The country of China is a great example(Tan et al.,2012.p.471).
In contrast, a set of rules was published in China Digital Times, highlighting the extent to which the Chinese government attempts to alter the way information is disseminated despite everything Google has ever claimed about search freedom of expression. Because the Chinese government felt it necessary, the list of regulations was published in China Digital Times. Strict rules govern what kinds of situations can be included on the list. Chinese media outlets are advised to take reader comments unfavorable to the government’s viewpoint off of their websites(Tan et al.,2012.p.470).
Google Company has come under serious threat from Yahoo and Microsoft’s escalating competition. Since technology has advanced significantly since a while ago, it has been quite simple for similar organizations to enter the market and even provide clients with identical services. With advances in technology, building websites that facilitate online information access has become relatively inexpensive and only requires the imagination of a business. Nonetheless, Google has managed to hold onto the top spot on the list. They created a user-friendly search engine for their customers that is simple to use and understand.
China’s cultural differences may hamper Google’s ability to serve worldwide markets. When it comes to the competition for its dominance, Google finds itself in a terrible situation of having to decide between regional search providers like Baidu, global search providers like Yahoo! and Microsoft, and unfinished government-backed country search engines(Tan et al.,2012.p.470
Conclusion
Google has recently started acting more like a global corporation. All three countries—Japan, France, and Germany—are ruled by the U.S. It consequently seems to have a more varied composition. In order to carry out its initiatives globally, Google’s management must be able to relate successfully to and guide the organization while acknowledging the unique cultural differences across various countries around the globe(Chirac & Li, 2022). The multicultural personnel must be effectively managed across cultures for the organization to operate effectively. A well-trained, multicultural leadership team will increase the organization’s competitiveness and the likelihood that the company’s projects will succeed.
Recommendations
Given that one of the main problems that frequently need to be solved in business is competition, a company must learn how to lessen the influence of the competition. Competition is undoubtedly a key aspect in assisting a firm. Effectively utilizing top cross-cultural managers serves as a source of ongoing innovation and knowledge that boosts the efficacy of Google’s initiatives and strengthens the company’s position as a global leader. Moreover, disputes resulting from cultural differences and associated problems could endanger the completion of projects at this company, which is becoming increasingly multicultural. Second, management is working harder than ever to be more attentive to cultural differences while boosting creativity and motivation in an effort to avoid misinterpretation (Jeanneney, 2008).
Another recommendation is that the management should be able to pull this off by exercising flexible leadership. The need for a cross-cultural management perspective in a multinational company like Google with a heterogeneous staff is explained by culture difference theories. These concepts take into account, among other things, interpersonal interactions, how one defines oneself and others, risk, management, motivating orientations, context, perspectives on time, and the environment. The case study shows how effective cross-cultural communications, mutual respect, forgiving one another, and culturally aware leadership are all essential for the administration of Google projects.
References
Chirac, j., & Li, C. (2022). CASE 5 GOOGLE’S COUNTRY EXPERIENCES: FRANCE, GERMANY, JAPAN
Jeanneney, J.N., 2008. Google and the myth of universal knowledge: a view from Europe. University of Chicago Press.
Tan, J. and Tan, A.E., 2012. Business under threat, technology under attack, ethics under fire: The experience of Google in China. Journal of business ethics, 110, pp.469-479.
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