Google: World's Fastest Internet & Parent Co. Alphabet Inc - Essay Sample

Google Company is the fastest internet access that is used globally, and its parent company is Alphabet Inc., NASDAQ, and GOOGL. As an information technology company, Google offers services like Google Maps, search engine, doodles, web store, and Chrome Browser. The Company was first founded in Stanford dorm rooms by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as a search engine for the need of individual websites. Its founding name was Backrub. Google Inc. was later founded in 1998 by the two partners after $100,000 funding from Andy Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun. Their first office was located at a garage in Menlo Park, California. Alphabet Inc., which owns other businesses, became Google's parent in 2015 with Sergey Brin as the president while Larry Page took the role of the Chief Executive Officer at Alphabet Inc. Thus, Google reaches out to billions of people globally through services like Gmail, YouTube, Android, Adwords, Google Play, and Google Chrome. Users of these sites exceed one billion every month and continue to embrace Google's focus on bigger things that affect them. The Company faces stiff competition from Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Bing, and Amazon, among others depending on the product that is similar to any of the companies 1named. Therefore, this section examines the innovation and business performance of Google Company.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Measurement Techniques

Alphabet Inc. has several business units since its establishment on 2nd October 2015. Other Subsidiaries include Calico, Chronicle, G.V., and Deep Mind, X, Capital G, Makani, Jigsaw, Google Fiber, Verily, Sidewalk Labs, Waymo, Loon, and Wing. The Company has the Equity of all its subsidiaries accounted for by XXVI Holdings Inc (Phillips & Google LLC, 2013, p.8). The Roman indication of XXVI is 26, which represents the total alphabet number. Thus, each subsidiary is valued distinctively and legally from Google. In 2017, the co-founders also announced that the Company would be reconstructed into a limited liability company known as Google LLC. Therefore, managing all these units assures that Google is one of the most admired companies due to its management techniques. People Analytics at Google plays the critical role of research on such issues as management strategies. For instance, the Company's analytics led a study on Project Oxygen, whose intent was to figure out the importance of managers to a company. Since then, the Company has focused on nurturing competent managers and the measurement ways to prove a manager's performance in the daily activities of the organization.

Google has developed a set of questions that they use to evaluate a manager's performance. As a result, reward schemes are created for the best performers, while the underperforming managers are guided on how to become better. Google's executive committee highlights that having a million stock grant is not enough for a company if its managers perform poorly. Thus, nurturing accountability and integrity among the managers is a crucial step towards success. The Company conducts an Upward Feedback Survey in which all questions are answered and scored on a scale of one to five. The responses take the form of strongly agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree (Phillips & Google LLC, p.364). Managers are rated based on the favorable score percentages. In this case, responses such as Strongly Agree and Agree are considered desirable. Also, Google carries out an analysis of previous scores of each manager and compares it with the current average rating. The comparison allows managers to identify and track their progress as well as that of others. Fundamentally, the anonymity of the surveys ensures that they do not affect management evaluations. As a result, Google avoids cases where managers play tricks or guess when answering and thus give wrong responses. The managers and their teams review the eventual results. Here, the manager drops the upward communication structure and falls to the employee's level, where they help in gaining feedback on areas that require change.

The survey approach reveals that it is practical. Other companies are likely to use three of the survey tasks to determine the competency and execution of activities by managers. For instance, it is easy to detect if a manager guides the team well enough to achieve a company's deliverables. Also, one can quickly evaluate a manager's effective communication of company goals to his side. Lastly, one can quickly assess a manager's technical skills through the ability to code and accounting finance. At Google LLC, six survey questions are used to evaluate a manager's effectiveness.

Does a manager offer feedback to the employees?

Most employees at Google agree that feedback helps them realize their weaknesses and maximize their profits. Therefore, a manager is first rated by the ability to issue timely feedback on the employee's work. Issuing feedback at Google has been working for years. Currently, the survey question is successfully benefiting the millennial generation who crave immediate or frequent feedback. Millennials now make the highest number of the workforce and cannot work effectively without feedback as compared to Generation X and Y (Schmidt & Almeida, 2011, p.45). Like Generation z, the millennial generation now controls the job market, implying that managers must invest more in feedback provision.

Does your manager micromanage?

Employees at Google report that they do not like to be micromanaged. Micromanaging implies a manager is getting into details of activities that are performed at other levels (Kostopoulos et al., 2011, p. 1335). Many employees appreciate being trusted to deliver projects as required. Micromanaging frustrates employees by killing their morale and minimizing their level of creativity. Google appreciates the fact that managers do not have solutions to every problem. Therefore, the joined abilities from the team members bring credible solutions to company activities, thus success. Therefore, Google LLC embraces the principle of autonomy, which implies that the Company gives employees the freedom to explore their competency and creativity in solving company issues and delivering quality.

Does your manager show consideration for you as an individual?

As a third evaluation question, it is essential to measure a manager's concern for employees' welfare. A self-centered leader kills the morale of employees. Being a good manager at Google implies that you must build a foundational rapport with your team (Kostopoulos et al., 2011, p.1337). Employee perception of the manager is a critical indicator that trusting and building good relations with employees develops a positive attitude towards work.

Does your manager share relevant information with you?

Employees will appreciate trusting with necessary information concerning the Company. It implies that you are confident about them providing solutions to the problem at hand. The more Google expanded, the more their managers got access to vital information that would help in their growth. Therefore, surveying a manager's ability to share information is also essential.

Has your manager had a helpful career evaluation with you in the last six months?

Carrying out employee evaluations can be a crucial concern for a company's success. Google employees agree that they would appreciate efforts by their managers to assess their competency at least twice a year. The implication is that a manager values an employee's contribution and would like to nurture them to greater heights of their career. In the end, employees receive career mentorship and job satisfaction. Therefore, failure to assess the career level of an employee implies that one is stagnant in their career ford the entire time they have been working for your Company.

Lastly, would you recommend your manager to other Googlers?

If you are a good manager, employees will quickly refer you to other users without flinching. Therefore, this last question assesses the managers' ability to impact the employees' lives basing on the first five questions. As a final question, it is used to add on the net score of a manager from previous questions.

Essential drivers of Innovation at Google LLC.

Google's Senior Vice President in charge of Advertising, Susan Wojcicki, explains how the Company has managed to forge forward in the era of technological developments and overcome the drawbacks in the industry. On many occasions, companies lose focus on their innovation as a result of a lack of brand maintenance. For instance, significant innovations like light bulbs and refrigeration are no longer as new as they were in the invention period. People no longer view them as significant innovations; hence are just standard tools. Similarly, the most challenging aspect of innovation at Google is the fact that their innovations may fall out of recognition or appreciation soon after launching. Susan explains how the innovation culture at Google has been the most significant pillar of creativity and employee management over the past twenty years. With the current employee number at 72,000, Google's strategy is to maintain a unique spirit that encourages existing and incoming employees in the Company's sixty offices to embrace technological changes (Gallagher et al., 2012, p.301). Despite beginning as a marketing head, Susan explains her experience as the 16th employee at Google at the time of its foundation (Gallagher et al., 2012, p.8). Google has changed over the past years with successful products and has also incurred losses that initiated strategic changes. However, the Company has maintained the risk and innovation commitment since its establishment.

Nonetheless, the major challenge at Google is whether the Company should invest in new products or rebrand the existing ones. Therefore, Google's managers decide to learn by perfecting existing products and also creating new ones. Susann gives the eight principles of innovation used by Google.

It is creating and maintaining a meaningful vision.

Google's mission is to assemble information from various sources around the world and organize it into accessible formats for every member of the public (Liedtka &Ogilvie, 2011, p.299). The information available on the Google website is useful for consumption and research. It rangers from politics, health news, psychology, science, nutrition, religion, pseudoscience, philosophy, and sociology, among others. The mission statement significantly guides the Company's decision in all departments. Google's decision to invest in a new area of research is due to the insight that the managers give jointly on the possibility of technology in solving the existing problem. An excellent example of new area investment is the creation of Gmail to enhance the functionality of webmails, more storage capacity, and improved search for information (Liedtka &Ogilvie, 2011, p.300). The mission covers millions of people, and employees are jointly involved in essential decisions to ensure that they support the Company's goals. Employees have become loyal assets of Google Company since they help in making information readily available for users even during crisis times. For instance, the Japan tsunami and earthquake of 2011 saw a joint involvement of Googlers in the creation of a Person Finder tool that helped in the quick location of the victims within two hours of the disaster (Gallagher et al., 2012, p.271)

Start Small but Think Big.

Having a vision is one thing while acting on the vision is another. Having big ambitions implies that you should have a starting point to achieve them. T...