Management and Leadership Paper on Google
As with its technology, Google has selected to ignore standard wisdom in designing its
business. Google started with seed money from angel investors and brought together two
venture capital firms that are competing to fund its first equity round. When the dotcom
boom exploded, its competitors spent millions of dollars on marketing campaigns to “build
brand,”“ but Google focused instead in quietly building a better search engine. The word
rapidly extended from one satisfied use to another. With its google.com site where it has
enhanced search technology and high volume of traffic, managers at Google recognized
search services and advertising as two initial opportunities for generating revenue (Google,
2007). The company operates the leading search engine that offers targeted search results
from more than 8 billion web pages (Hoovers, 2007). Google generates revenue through
ads that are targeted by keywords and also sells ads across a network with over 200,000
affiliated websites. Founders Larry Page and Sergy Brin each have nearly about 30%
voting control of the company (Hoovers, 2007). Google has its management and
leadership well-handled and for this reason it happens that they are among the best-run
companies in the technology sector.
One of the secrets behind the search engine besides of its internally developed software,
made-to-order hardware, and open source is its people management (Claburn, 2006).
Google managers tend to be reserved on the IT strategy subject. They are reluctant to
discuss specific vendors or products and even with their servers and data centers. Behind
its simplicity being apparent, is a mash-up of internally developed software, made-to-order
hardware, artificial intelligence, obsession with performance and an unconventional
approach to people management. Google is different with respect to making its
applications original and unique. The IT infrastructure behind Google Web services
matters to the hundreds of engineers who are dedicated to Google mission of organizing
the world information and creating it to be universally useful and accessible. That occurs
when IT plan is called for that matches the company business vision in scope and
ambition. IT management at Google is decentralized (Claburn, 2006). The company has
neither a CIO nor CTO, but Google is full of senior level engineers and other skilled
technologists. Google employs a matrix management system. This is where managers have
many direct reports and engineers report to multiple people. Engineers mostly get their
directions and critiques from their project leaders. Like other things at Google, computer
