Google Inc. company overview and business operations

Google is one of the most known search engines available today. Started up in 1999, Google slowly began to gain a high ranking among search engines and ad revenue vehicles. Through an analysis of Porter's five forces, one can begin to understand how Google became one of the most used search engines used today.

The first force to be analyzed is the threat of new entrants to the market. Currently, the threat of new entrants is low as people have already grown comfortable with the search engine choices presently available. Furthermore, Google has demonstrated that it has a strong foothold on the search engine market. In November 2009, Google "enjoyed a 65.6% share of all U.S. searches…[and outside] the United States Google's lead was even larger, exceeding a 90% share of search queries in numerous countries."

The second force that needs to be analyzed is the threat of substitutes. Presently, Google competes with a variety of search engines including Yahoo! And Microsoft's Bing. Additionally, the services that Google offers such as Gmail, Finance, Book Search, Maps, and Checkout -- although fully integrated through Google -- can be substituted by other email, financial, map, and e-commerce sites. While Google can be substituted by individual, specialized sites, Google's search engine capabilities are hard to be substituted as "Google's revenues come solely from licensing its search technology to Yahoo! And other sites" through December 1999." One area in which there appears to be a high threat of substitution is with Google+, the company's social networking service (SNS). However, while the number of Facebook users outnumbers Google+'s, studies have demonstrated that Google's SNS is favored over Facebook (Chang, 2012)

The third force, the bargaining power of suppliers, also appears to have a slightly higher impact on Google. Other suppliers can be defined as companies that offer search engine capabilities that are equal to or similar to Google's search engine offerings. Because of the low number of companies that offered search engine services like Google, these companies must make sure that their competitive streaks and attempts to merge with other companies do not violate any laws. For example, after "Microsoft's unsuccessful $44.6 billion bid to acquire Yahoo! In February 2008, Google sought to place its advertisements with Yahoo!'s search results." However, both Google and Yahoo! encountered opposition when the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to file an antitrust lawsuit to prevent the placement of these advertisements and thus Google and Yahoo! did not proceed with this business possibility. The U.S. Department of Justice feared that Google was positioned to create a "monopoly in Internet online advertising."

The fourth force, the bargaining power of buyers, remains relatively low, as Google has worked hard to ensure that it provides the easiest navigable services to its consumers (buyers). Since Google started, one of the company's chief goals has been to provide "the best user experience possible." Their "homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting. And when [Google] build new tools and applications, [they] believe they should work so well you don't have to consider how they might have been designed differently."