I have been studying an online course on marketing and was suppose to do an assignment containing PEST and SWOT analysis for Google in next 10 year. Rather than just getting a grade, I thought why not to share this with others. I hope you all find this interesting.
PEST Analysis:
- Political Factors
According to the newspaper, “The Guardian”, Google spends $18m per year lobbying in Washington DC. Donald Trump attacks Google’s fellow tech giant Amazon for its connection that Google and Facebook should be regulated as utilities, but Google will only increase its lobbying expenditure. In June 2017, during the antitrust investigation in Europe, Google was fined $2.7 billion. Google is facing serious criticism but still, Google will extend its commitment with Alphabet Inc. which was made five years ago.
Donald Trump also supports Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel, who says, “They lie to protect themselves. They know that bragging about their great monopoly invites being audited, scrutinized and attacked. Since they very much want their monopoly profits to continue unmolested, they tend to do whatever they can to conceal their monopoly – usually by exaggerating the power of their (non-existent) competition.” It is hard to speculate, but due to increasing awareness in the minds of people for online privacy, trust from competitors, it seems like Google can face more political oppose in next 10 years.
- Economical Factors
Alphabet has collected a large sum of the amount of cash, which makes it very vulnerable to inflation. A sudden drop in the value of a currency could reduce the company’s value.
A large amount of money Google keeps overseas makes it very vulnerable to exchange rates and the currency market. If the dollar is strong, Google could lose a lot of money if it is forced to bring a lot of cash back into the United States. The company could also lose money if the dollar is weak because it could be forced to exchange a stronger currency for a weak dollar. Whatever the case may be, Google has to walk on the edge of a sword at least for next ten years.
- Social Factors
In next ten years, people are going to be more aware of their privacy. Due lack of trust on Google many people are moving to other search engines. I have started using Duck Duck Go to avoid useless notifications from Google on my phone.
Google has not been able to translate its success in traditional search to other segments of the market, including the shopping search. Due to more companies getting involved in shopping search, Google does not stand a chance in next ten years to flip the situation.
- Technological Factors
Growing sophistication of social media solutions and instant messaging. Solutions like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger can now be used to send news, audio messages and even streaming video. Programs like Venmo and WeChat can be used to make financial transactions. This provides an alternative to Google’s products that is not computer based.The technological factor will accelerate in coming ten years and Google will not be able to compete with such a huge traffic.
Over the years it has often been suggested in different places all over the globe that advertising in public spaces should be banned. Here is an example of this from the UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/feb/14/ban-advertising-in-public-spaces-thinktank
Let’s assume such a thing would be the case for Google. In other words: that a global community would agree to ban advertising on all existing search-engines on the globe.
Let’s make a SWOT-analysis of Google in such a situation compared to other existing search-engine named Duck Duck Go. It is quite easier to distinguish the Google SWOT analysis with a single search engine.
SWOT-analysis
- Strengths
- Google has so-called market monopoly in present
- Strong economy
- Introduction in Android and mobile technologies
- Strong technology like google maps
- Weaknesses
- No privacy for users compared to DDG, history can be traced easily in Google
- High reliance on Advertisement
- Opportunities
- More development in Android operating system is possible
- Diversification in Google books, Google Maps, cloud computing
- Penetrate markets with consumer electronics
- Threats
- Existing search engines give high level of privacy and Ad-free search
- High reliance on Advertisement- a ban will cause economic fall down i.e 85% of its revenue from Ads will vanish
Live_Life 