Google’s hiring culture

One of the things that Battelle touches on “The Search” is the culture of hiring approach. He explains how the hiring process is strictly enforced so Google can have the best possible employees in their company. Battelle mentions that contrary to other companies which employee hire other people based on social connections or not necessarily based on their skills, at the end they hurt the productiveness of the company. He explains that when a candidate applies for a position, the people on top usually hire someone who they can manipulate so they can control the person thus, creating a hierarchy, eventually creating a hostile environment in which employees are very little productive. “They created hiring committees that review every single open position. That way, it wasn’t just one employee’s opinion that gated a person joining the company; it was more of a pluralistic debate”.(Battelle,131).
           On chapter seven Battelle explains how the marketing process for Ad-words works. I think it is interesting how Google establishes a market price for an Ad-word. For example, he mentions that Google sells key words to a company so that when someone types that key word, Google will rank their page at the top of the search. Obviously it works. One example of how companies are encouraged to buy Ad-words is the key words: “digital camera” for example Sony or Kodak would be willing to pay a lot of money for those key words because their site would be ranked at the top of the page bringing more traffic to their online store. Another example of good competition to buy online Ad-words would be “HD TV’S” key words. We know that through the rest of the year a lot of people will be upgrading their TV sets. I bet that big companies are going to pay a lot of money to buy those key words on Ad-words. I really think that Google came up with a good market strategy. The only negative aspect of it is that small businesses cannot afford to compete with big companies for the key words on Ad-words online advertising.

The search

Certainly, “The Search” book is full of details which explain the most important questions of how the Internet was created and which companies are the pioneers in this business. It is very detailed; it shows a vast amount of valuable information for everyone. It explains how the average person, the professors, students, doctors and scholar make a valuable use of all the resources found online. Moreover, it shows very explicitly, how everything we do online is traced. “The Search” explains how companies target our behavior online to later target us with specific commercial or informational products. Obviously all the great services offered by the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, or AOL, are not entirely free. They come with a price, the price of turning our privacy to those big companies. I liked the way; John Battlle explained in chapter two all the possible questions we as users might have, by using the: who, what, where, why and how much. As I said before, nothing is really for free and he proved that the major search engines have a very innovative marketing strategy to catch us. Moreover, it is interesting how the first years of Google’s creation, the CEO rejected the idea of “Media Company” in which basically compared to TV broadcast. They wanted to be named only a “Technology Company” we know that it was basically impossible to only be a technology company, we know that Google has become a media technology company, and who knows in the near future we might have a broadcast TV called Google TV Broadcast Company.

Google business partners satisfaction is not guarantee.

     One of the things that shocked me the most is the fact that too many people complaint the way Google is run. Former employees as well as advertising agencies, complaint a lot about Google’s business practices.  They say that Page and Brin are too authoritarian and that they don’t like delegating responsibilities because of lack of trust to their employees.

     The book also, mentions that Wall Street investors didn’t want that kind of business practices because it was too time consuming, however investors gave up because the Google guys were making the proper decisions and still making profits.  On the other hand, Page and Brin, say that there are many ways of running a company, and that every company is different.  They have different clients and different market, thus they run the company their way. In fact some people accuse Page and Brin very, very authoritarian.  “Google is a monarchy with two kings” (Battelle, 233).  Furthermore Page and Brin defenders, say that people are just jealous of them, because they are young, brilliant and successful.  They say that few companies in the world grow that fast and that it is impossible to keep up with the company growth, employee and business satisfaction, although they are trying to improve costumer service.  In my personal opinion I think that in terms of job satisfaction at Google is very high.  They have free lunch, good food, a lot of free time laundry, and valuable stock options.  Literally some of Google employees are now rich and are still working because Google is a great company and they love working there

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