Corporate strategy is defined as the highest strategic plan of a company or business. It plans the company’s goal and direction to be achieved strategically. Corporate strategy is a continuous process, and the directors and employees of the company have to respond to its changing circumstances and environment according to the market state (Corporate Strategy, 2020). In order to sustain business growth for the long-term, it is essential to have a corporate strategy, as a result, Google adopted various corporate strategies; for example, Google has a different generic corporate strategy that playing a vital part for organizational growth. This report will focus on the corporate strategy of Google, Google vision and the threats that Google faces.
Now the question is does Google need to refocus? Which businesses/ products would you recommend abandoning (if any)?
When Google announced its unification with Alphabet, some investors were uneasy about mixing investments, acquisitions, and business. These investors feared decreasing the transparency, accountability of the business, and discipline among the workers and investors. Nevertheless, it was somewhat beneficial to most of the people and for its emerging businesses. In order to achieve an ambidextrous approach, Google needs to focus more on its business to reduce complexity and dynamism (Reeves, 2015). Alphabet couldn't succeed fully with Alphabet reach, experiments, potential, business capability in Google's core search and advertising programs. Many former employers have revealed how Alphabet is struggling to grapple the company with the Alphabet’s resources in pursuit of gaining profitability (Love, 2015). When a company lacks some perception, consistency, and flexibility in order to operate the business, Google need to refocus on the following issues:
Google needs to refocus on its effort in the area of product development. Google has been criticized for dissimilarity in product development efforts in the industry. With its corporate strategy, Google can build various products that can help them dominate the market. However, Google needs to refocus on its strategic movement first to ensure such products' profitability before entering into the market (Thompson, 2019).
Google's corporate vision should be modified to compete with new products and inventions in the market. There were hardly any changes in the vision statement after the reconstruction. As the corporate vision can predict its business's future, the adjustments and diversification should also reflect on the products and innovations (Thompson, 2019). The Alphabet, as the parent company, can advise its subsidiaries by helping them plan their vision.
Google can refocus on smaller businesses to find faster growth and strengthen its brand with quick profitability.
Google should invest more in AI, Cloud business, and Android as these technologies will play a key part to gain competitive advantages in the fast-paced business world. Although innovation is already the core focus of Google, they need to refocus to compete in the IT industry (Moghadasi, 2019).
After Google remade its structure as Alphabet, the co-founders' Larry Page and Sergey Brin have made many changes in the management. As one of the highest profitable companies, Google needs more ambitious, smart, and competent people with top management skills and an individual should also be given more freedom of action.
Google can refocus its employee performance by implementing Alphabet's unique employee performance system. Verbal motivation and giving positive feedback can help the employees have better performance, and employees can also find enough freedom to flourish individual ideas and show them to the world.
Google needs to refocus on its policies and standards by adding value to it. For example, Google can hire employees with more intelligence levels; Google can replace all the hard-copies with the e-copies, set a prominent budget and the extraordinary team in order to grow Google business.
Google needs to refocus more on the stakeholders by improving the relationship with each stakeholder. For example, Wing, Waymo, Fiber, Makani are some of the stakeholders Google can build a relationship for organizational growth and also to build a company reputation (Moghadasi, 2019).
In terms of abandoning any product or business, Google does not need any. The Google Cemetery website has 166 dead Google products and technologies already. Google has closed down many of its inventions after years of engineering work such as Google Wave, Google Gears, Google Talk, Picasa, iGoogle, Google Reader, Code Search, etc. Nonetheless, some of the dead products are still working combined with other products, or people are using it anyway. The main reason for burying new technologies and products would be a lack of marketing. Google does not believe in the role of marketing to succeed in a business. When Google launches any product or services, Google announces it in the market and is done with marketing the products further to get new users (Foremski, 2018). Google often develop new products with different teammates. Google develop the products on their own as an autonomous group and launch it. This lack of communication causes these dead products as these products fail to meet the users or customers' requirements. The engineers often make two of the same products to call it a Google product, which is an unrefined interpretation. So before developing a product or services, Google should decide which team would launch it, and each team should be regarded as a separate entity. The Google Assistant has a good reputation as a separate Google search team runs it.
On the other hand, there is one Google Messaging team which consisted of Hangouts, Hangouts Chat, Allo, Duo, Google Voice, and Android Messages. These products or services were shut down because of having no credibility. This entire shutdown has ruined Google's reputation, and Google lost users and also damages its reputations, which is an accumulative effect of abandoning the product. People are losing confidence in Google and its services; thus, more users will move out of the Google ecosystem. Google likes to experiment with its products, but it also needs to tell people about their roadmap and communicate what products will be around for long and what products will be gone within a few years. As a result, products that were the center of attraction are not anymore, for example, Google+. Google abandons any product that does not have many active users, which makes users feel unsafe (Amadeo, 2019).