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1-Page Summary of What Would Google Do?
A Searching Question
Google is the most successful company in the world. It has changed how people do business and communicate with each other. In order to succeed, it’s important to ask yourself what Google would do? This means you have to think about all of these new companies that are changing the way we live our lives, such as YouTube (which Google owns), Facebook, Craigslist, Wikipedia and Amazon.
Customers are in control. They can influence the direction of a company by speaking up online and asking for changes to products, operations, and policies.
People are in instant touch with one another and can form groups quickly to support or oppose institutions. Selling to the masses is a moribund tactic because today, niches rule. Marketing is passé because you shouldn’t try to sell your products; instead, converse with customers so that they’ll help you make money from them.
Companies must be open and transparent to endure. Open networks, such as Google, create value by connecting people with information. Companies that are not open will no longer succeed because they are not connected to the network of ideas or people.
Google’s corporate philosophy suggests ways to deal with the new realities of business. Google believes that it is important to focus on the user and do one thing really well.
- “Fast is better than slow.” * “You can make money without doing evil” are both great ideas. However, seeing Google in action reveals more about these ideas. Whenever you ask yourself the question “What would Google do?” it helps to reverse engineer Google and apply its principles to your own situation. You’re essentially asking how to understand a world that’s constantly changing and figuring out how to see things from Google’s perspective.”
Google has had a lot of success. In 2008, Google accounted for 71% of all searches in the United States and 87% of all searches in Great Britain. It is one of the leading brands around the world.
AOL and Yahoo used to be the dominant forces in online advertising, but now they’re becoming obsolete. They’ve failed to adapt their business models, preferring a more traditional approach of tightly controlling distribution and content. This has led them to overspend on marketing, which is no longer as effective as it once was.
Yahoo is the last old-media company, unlike Google, which is the first post-media company. Google doesn’t wait for customers to come to it; instead, it goes wherever its customers are – all over the web. Approximately one third of its revenue comes from ancillary sites that aren’t directly related to Google.com itself.
Cede Control to Your Customers
One rule in the new interactive era is that if you let people take control, they will. However, if you try to control them, they’ll rebel and leave. That’s why smart companies empower their customers by giving them more freedom and letting them be themselves. Dell Computer learned this the hard way when bloggers started posting thousands of warnings about its machines online. When a Houston Chronicle reporter asked Dell for an official response, a company spokesperson said that if people wanted to communicate with Dell, they should do so at its Web site (and on its terms). This only made things worse because it showed how out-of-touch the company was with current trends in technology and customer interaction.
Dell was in trouble and its share price plummeted. Finally, it started to listen to customer complaints about its computers. It created a blog for customers to express their views on Dell products and services, as well as an online forum called IdeaStorm where people could suggest improvements. Dell spent $150 million improving customer service by adding more call centers and hiring more staff members who could handle calls better.
