Google, a company whose headquarters are in Mountain View, California, is a multinational technology company that offers several services like cloud computing, emails, and online advertising. The company which started as a search engine is now one of the biggest technological companies in the world (Cassin, 2017). Google Inc. functions through the interconnections of critical partners, activities, resources, and products. Such resources include servers, data centers, human resource, patents and licenses, as well as, products like Gmail, Google news, and search engines (Martin, 2014). The primary source of income for Google which uses the hidden revenue business model is advertising. The hidden revenue model is an income generation method that excludes users in that they do not pay for products or services rendered (Cuofano, 2018). Revenues for Google stream from a third party which is advertisements and this means that the ordinary users do not pay for the search engines. Advertisers fund the company while putting across their various products and services for Google users to see and purchase. The model works in that Google provides a platform and better data services for the various business entities to put keywords into monetary value through which the businesses bid for those particular keywords (Cuofano, 2018). During bidding the firms pay some amount of money and it is that fees that are used by publishers to increase their efforts in the production of content (Cuofano, 2018). The publishers, in turn, provide the free material, high quality and easily accessible by the user. The business model is successful if the value proposition appeals to the stakeholders and in this case, free content is valuable enough for the users. This model, however, has received some criticism due to the asymmetry towards the users. Although they do not pay for the content, the users offer valuable data to the company.
Google Inc. is a global firm that has offices overseas including countries like China and carrying out business activities in a foreign land requires total compliance to the rules and regulations of the host country. Sometimes the laws can be inhibiting even for such a big company, and this may lead to huge losses especially if the laws limit the functionality of the company. For instance, in China, the government has formulated a lot of restricting policies that restrict the access to content that the Chinese government thinks is inappropriate for the people for example gambling and pornographic sites (Jiang, 2018). The particular law limits the number of sites available in the markets which drastically reduces the income. Moreover, the government of China came up with an internet censorship tracker that is popularly known as ‘the great firewall of China' that overlaps national systems and blocks such uncensored content even as blocking systems gets more refined. In addition to that, there are several tactics that the government also adopted such as fines, imprisonment, and closing news outlets all aimed at punishing lawbreakers who commit censorship offenses. Some of these policies have made it difficult for Google Inc. Function well since most of the content found in web pages is usually uncensored. In fact, at one point the company opted out of the mainland of China after the government banned the search engines for a few days (Friedmann, 2012). Other inhibitory policies that Google should follow are the Chinese government operating the cloud storage, restriction of data transfer out of the country and enforcing the rule that an individual's real identity must match the online account. In spite of this, Google has made significant steps in keeping the pledge of abiding by Chinese law by providing censored content such as personalizing the news aggregation app.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The difference between Google working in China and the United States is notable. For instance, on matters censorship, the laws are not as harsh such as the cloud storage being independently controlled by the government which gives the company independence in its activities. Besides, the US government through the department of defense has directly worked with Google on the drone software referred to as ‘Project Maven' for improvement of drone strikes accuracy. Although the project is experiencing a lot of controversy with all the stakeholders having different opinions, it shows the collaborative nature of the US government to work with technological firms instead of tearing them down with laws and policies. In conclusion, Google has crossed international borders to become one of the large firms in the technological firm in the world courtesy of some critical features such as key partners, channels, products, resources, and activities. Some of its products are search engines, Gmail and Google news which are facilitated by resources like servers and data centers. The company uses the hidden revenue business model that keeps users out of the equation in the generation of revenue and offering a value proposition that appeals to the stakeholders. However, the company faces several functional challenges overseas especially in China that range from restrictive policies, blocking of systems as well as overlapping national systems. Additionally, the Chinese government controls the web cloud services and has a weather tracker to censor the internet. Other tactics include fines, personalized censorship, and imprisonment for lawbreakers. On the other hand, back home Google Inc. is exposed to a friendly environment with non- inhibitory laws and administrative assistance and collaboration such as the drone's software which has led to the company becoming the large firm that it is today.
References
Cassin, B. (2017). Google Inc.: From Search to Global Capital. Google Me .
Cuofano, G. (2018, December 22). What Is a Hidden Revenue Business Model? Google's Business Model Explained. FourWeekMBA. Retrieved from https://fourweekmba.com/hidden-revenue-model-google/
Friedmann, D. (2012). Paradoxes, Google and China: How Censorship can Harm and Intellectual Property can Harness Innovation. Information Technology and Law Series , 303-327.
Jiang, Y. (2018). Chapter Three: Censorship in China. Censored , 93-112.
Martin. (2014). Google's Business Model. CLEVERISM. Retrieved from https://www.cleverism.com/google-business-model/
