Free Essay with Google SWOT Analysis

Today, businesses are operating in a highly changing environment, and they must respond proactively to survive. To be in a good position to respond to the changes in the environment and respond accordingly, a business must understand its environment. SWOT analysis is the best way a firm can assess several factors making its internal and external environment. The internal environment comprises of strengths and weaknesses such as patents, location, and reputation whereas the external environment entails opportunities and threats such as competitors, prices, and suppliers. By undertaking a SWOT analysis, a business can list its strengths and understand if they are sufficient to overcome weaknesses and identify presenting opportunities to seize as well as threats to address to remain competitive in the marketplace.

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Background of Google

Google Inc. is a global technology company that offers a wide range of services including advertising, search, enterprise, operating systems and hardware products. It started in 1996, and it is headquartered in Mountain View, California (Thompson, 2018). It employs about 53,000 people globally. In 2014, Google recorded revenue of $66 billion and a net profit of $14 billion (Thompson, 2018).

How SWOT Analysis Works at Google Inc.

Being a technology company that experiences vigorous competition from the rivals, Google employs SWOT analysis technique to understand its strengths and enhance performance by addressing the weaknesses. In SWOT analysis model, a company must possess sufficient strengths to support its growth (Grant, 2016, p. 229). Google's strengths include a strong brand image, patented proprietary products, diversified business and large organizational size whereas the weaknesses include dependence on the internet and minimal physical presence (Thompson, 2018). Through SWOT analysis, Google can identify and maximize its strengths to ensure that they are sufficient to support its growth while enhancing its performance to overcome its weaknesses. This is achieved through exploitation of strengths such as realizing growth through expansion of products to undermine the weakness of overreliance on the internet.

Similarly, Google employs SWOT analysis to establish opportunities that it needs to exploit while at the same time prioritizing the threats that it needs to phase out to remain competitive. SWOT analysis is a planning tool that helps businesses to think of how to seize opportunities while overcoming threats (Betz, 2016, p. 327). For example, as a planning tool, Google identifies opportunities such as tapping more on mobile users, expanding Google fiber and penetrating markets with consumer electronics and strategizes on how to reap from these opportunities for business growth and expansion (Thompson, 2018). On the other hand, it uses SWOT analysis to single out threats such as tough competition and imitation of products to select strategies that would help in addressing them. SWOT analysis is a planning tool for Google that lays out a plan for seizing opportunities and addressing threats so that the company can remain competitive.

Conclusion

SWOT analysis is a business model that helps businesses to assess if they possess strengths enough to outweigh the weaknesses and to plan on how they will reap from presenting opportunities while addressing the threats. For a business to realize growth, it must always take account of its strengths which should be more than the weaknesses. It should also plan strategically how to remain competitive by maximizing benefits from opportunities and managing threats.

References

Betz, F., 2016. Strategic Thinking: A Comprehensive Guide. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Thompson, A., 2018. Google's SWOT Analysis & Recommendations- Panmore Institute. Retrieved 23 February 2018, from http://panmore.com/google-swot-analysis-recommendations