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Web Search Engine and Google

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GOOGLE INC. HARVARD BUSINESS CASE #9-806-105

INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND In December of 2005, six years after its founding and twenty-one months after the company went public, search engine giant Google, Inc. had grown into not just probably the world’s biggest and most successful Internet companies, but also one of America’s biggest business success stories. Founded by two Stanford graduate students, Google was in many ways the quintessential American business success story. Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google’s founders) infused their start-up with an innovative, entrepreneurial culture and established an organizational structure that supported innovation and risk taking. While Brin, Page and their fellow “Googlers” pursued the …show more content…

An exception to this lack of government intervention on the Web has been government efforts to access Internet users’ private data (including surfing habits) under the terms of the Patriot Act. Google, along with Yahoo! and the other major search engines and web portals, are subject to considerable government pressures to release information about users. It should be noted that there are also now increasing signs that as technologies converge (e.g., the blending of telecommunications and Web communications) and as competitors cross into each others’ market territories (e.g., cable and phone companies becoming involved in Internet services through broadband products), more regulation of the Internet in the United States may be seen (Yang & Crocket, 2005, p. 38). Outside of the United States, the Internet regulatory environment is more restrictive. This is particularly true in emerging economies like China (where Google is anxious to establish a foothold). In most non-democratic foreign environments, Internet companies and Internet users must cope with massive government restrictions, including censorship and the surrender of private user data. In other markets where there is not necessarily direct government regulation or restriction, Google might find itself facing a certain amount of political backlash because of its status as an iconic

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