International Business
About Google
Google is a global Internet company that deals with Internet software and services market. What makes Google one of the biggest Internet companies is its huge revenue from its advertising business which is well-known in the industry. Google is headquartered in its Mountain View, California complex. Googles current Presidents are Sergey Brin and Larry Page and its current CEO is Eric Schmidt. Googles revenue for last year was 21,795.6 and currently it employs 20,222 employees.
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both of whom were Stanford graduates who founded Google in mid 1990s and later raised 1million to start Google. By the end of 2000 the Google had an index of more than 1.3 million web pages. The company became one of the top 100 companies in the software industry and since then has expanded internationally. It opened its domains in many other countries in the world capturing more and more Internet users. It has constantly worked on developing new and innovative products ranging from Google Voice Search (in 2001), Froogle (online shopping), Google Blogger (in 2002), Gmail (in 2004), Google Mini (in 2005), Google Video store, (in 2006) to Google App Engine (in 2008). The companys IPO took place in August 2004 on NASDAQ Stock Exchange. Not only has it developed through its innovative products, but has acquired several companies to maintain a good position in the industry. In 2006 Google Inc acquired several companies including Urchin software. The company has shown its presence in Asia too. Its major alliances were with News Corporations Fox Interactive Media and E-bay in 2006. The Google has been trying to take over Yahoo to maintain its consistent position as a market player, though it has not been yet finalized.
Products and Services
Google has been repeatedly cited as the worlds one of the most innovative companies and Fast Magazine published it as the most innovative company in 2008 (Fast Company Staff, 2008). It is called the most innovative company because of the products it has produced and services it offers. Google.com is a search engine used by majority of its users as its main offering. Other offerings include its Google Books, Google Image, Google News, Google Scholars, Google Video and others.
Another set of its offerings are applications which can be used by users to perform various functions. Google Docs is a Microsoft Word like application which helps users make spreadsheets, word documents, and presentations online. Google Calendar helps them plan their time. Gmail is an email application allowing users to make an email account. Another application is Google Groups which allows like-minded people to make online groups. Other applications include Google Reader, Orkut, and YouTube.
The third set of its offerings are Client applications. One of them is Google Toolbar which enables users to perform various functions from their browser. Google chrome is its new Internet browser famous for its speed and reliability. Picasa and Google Desktop are its other client applications. Google GEO is another set of its offerings which mainly include products like Google Earth and Maps helping users to navigate their location. Google has also introduced some products for the Mobile Phone users which mainly include Android and enable mobile phone users to use it as an operating system. Android allows users to use Google Maps, Blogger, and GOOG-411 on their mobile phones. Google Checkout is another product of Google making payments for online purchases simpler.
Apart from the products mentioned above, Google also has plans of introducing a new operating system which will radically be different from the operating systems which are currently on the market. It is called Chrome OS. Many others are in the pipeline and Google Labs is the name given to website which gives details about all the new products that engineers at Google are working on.
Globalization
Globalization in economic terms refers to the inter-connectedness of the national marketseconomies into one international marketeconomy and this integration has been brought about by the decreasing trade barriers, direct foreign investment, and emergence of technology (Jadish, 2004). The process of globalization has come to have a significant impact on our environment, social lives, development, and of course businesses.
Globalization is not a new phenomenon as the world has been moving toward making this world a global village since long but the process has sped in the last few decades. The various reasons for the high speed of globalization process over the last few decades are due to the following facts technology has advanced at an enormous pace, countries have reduced trade barriers to minimum, international and regional organizations have also played an important role in the globalization of this world. Globalization has opened doors for many big and small companies who benefited from the globalizing world and have significantly increased their revenues.
As mentioned earlier, many sectors have benefited from the globalization and one of these sectors is IT sector including the companies running their businesses online. Companies like Amazon, EBay, Apple, Microsoft, and Google have a huge customer base outside their home country. Google, Inc is a global company having its offices in many countries such as Australia, France, Germany, China, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Japan, and India. As of 30th September, 2008, it employs 20,123 employees in its offices around the world which makes it a huge global company (Google Investor FAQs, n.d.).
Googles offices might be located in a few countries around the world but its users are located in almost every country many of whom religiously use Google for their search queries. Googles mission in every country is to provide the best experience to the customer. It is because of this that its foreign revenue has kept increasing since its inception. Its foreign operations began soon after its inception and online users visited Google through positive word of mouth generated by the initial users. Today Google is available in more than 100 languages which speak volumes about its global nature.
In short, Google has capitalized on the shrieked size of this world and has penetrated in all the countries of the world by offering various innovative services. This is not to say that the Google does not face any problems operating in other countries. Google has to follow the laws of foreign countries to continue operating there. Sometimes it also lands Google into courts.
Global Business and Legal Challenges
With the many benefits that globalization has brought for the business organizations it also brings complex challenges for business organizations. One of these is the legal challenge. In this section, we would discuss the legal aspects of global business. For any company which wants to enter the new market successfully, it has to fully understand the legal system of that country. This way it would save itself a lot of trouble as any mistake on the part of the company can get company to incur losses. Earlier we said that globalization has eased the barriers to foreign investment but the increasing investment by companies in various countries has led to governments creating complex laws that companies have to adhere to (Cuizon, 2009).
Companies have to realize that laws on the same issues might be different in different countries and they have to understand the differences before a company enters any country. The company has to ensure that its rules and regulations are in synch with that of the laws of the country in which it is operating. It is not that the country- specific business laws and international business laws are different because there are similarities in the laws. A company should identify these similarities and use to its advantage.
There are some issues that companies need to take special care of. First comes the recruitment. When recruiting employees, a company has to understand the local employment laws and contract laws. It also needs to ensure that only those people are selected who are called fit in domestic relations law and these include laws related to issues such as marriage, divorce etc. Another important issue is of working hours. Some countries have stringent laws governing the issue of working hours. In some countries a business day is 8 hours long while in others it is 7 hours long. Sexual harassment is another very important issue that companies have to take care of in their rules and regulations and companies have to ensure that their sexual harassment laws are in synch with national laws.
Minimum wage issue has also to be addressed in the company rules and regulations. The government mainly announces a minimum wage every year which companies have to take note of. It is very clear that Google will not face any issue as for as minimum wage policy is concerned as Google pays its employees a very handsome pay regardless of the location of the employees. Apart from the issues mentioned above, there are other issues that companies have to learn about. Taxation is one of them and this is an issue that is of utmost importance for many companies. Many companies hire special taxation lawyers to take care of this issue. Google has to take care of various privacy laws as well because it has been accused of violating privacy rights of users. In the following paragraphs we will discuss some legal challenges that Google has faced abroad.
Millions of online users use Google to search for their queries and this leads to Google accumulating a lot of personal information of the users. Google stores this information into its servers and it is there for around 24 months before it is deleted. In Europe, Google faced criticism from the European Union and some non-governmental organizations on this issue (Information Management Journal, 2007). Google contends that the information it collects on users, mainly concerning search terms and number of times the website has been visited, is beneficial in improving companys services, leading to better user experience as well. The EU and other organizations wanted Google to reduce the time period over which data is stored. Succumbing to the pressure of the above mentioned groups, Google decided to reduce the time period by six months and it now stores the information for 18 months. This is one of the issues that Google faced abroad.
Another significant issue that Google has faced globally is Copyrights issue. Google has digitized many books and has made them available online through its Google Books service. It has also received criticism though that Google is violating intellectual property rights by publishing the work of various authors online. A case in point is the criticism that Google has received from European publishers (VNU Staff, 2005). The publishing organizations in Europe claim that European laws do not allow Google to digitize the works published by European publishers. In America Google justifies its digitization of copyrighted material on the ground that these works are intended for fair use but according to European laws fair dealing is not as broad as the fair use in America.
Another legal issue that Google faced emerged when it wanted to name its Smartphone as Nexus One which is almost the same as the name of the novel of Philip K. Dick Nexus-6 Robots (Mobile Magazine, 2009). The daughter of the author has raised this issue and she claims that Google never consulted her on the issue. Google could not name its Smartphone as Nexus One if the daughter wins the battle.
Conclusion
In the light of the above discussion, it can be said that globalization has opened new avenues for companies to do businesses abroad. It has actually played an important role in the success of many international ventures. This brought about the favorable policies adopted by the governments which led to reduced trade barriers. Favorable policies were complemented by the advancement in technology which exponentially sped up in the last few decades. There is other side to globalization as well. Because of globalization, many companies started investing in different countries and this led to governments devising complex laws governing the entry of foreign companies. If a company is to survive through the laws of that operating country, it has to make conscious efforts to understand the laws of that country.
Google has attracted a customer base which is located in almost every country of the world. No doubt that it has been successful in many countries it has entered. Still, it has faced some challenges with regards to laws of the countries. This paper gave some examples which showed that different countries might have different laws and a company has to abide to those laws. Google did the same even when it meant less business for them. One thing has to be noted about Google here that it is a huge company and can afford to fight long legal battles.
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