Friday Fact Box - Google

by Katharina Scholtz

The Google monster knows everything. It knows what you're searching for, how long you're online, and all the bitchy things you've typed to your friends over Google Talk.

But we too can play that game! Oh yes, I've used the monster against itself for this week's Friday Fact Box. Oh how the tables have turned. Muhahahahaha!

(Small victories ok? Don't judge me.)

Image via Flickr, by manfrys (under CC)

From BuzzMachine by Jeff Jarvis, Google is God December 2007

Google is the “fastest growing company in the history of the world.” Times of London, 1/29/06
Google controls 65.1% of all searches in the U.S. at the end of 2007 and 86% of all searches in the UK, according to measurement company Hitwise
Google was searched 4.4 billion times in the U.S. alone in October, 2007 (three times Yahoo), says Nielsen
Average searches per searcher: 40.7
Google™s sites had 112 million U.S. visitors in November, 2007, says Nielsen
Google™s traffic was up 22.4% in 2007 over 2006, according to Comscore
Google earned $15 billion revenue and $6.4 billion profit in 2007, a profit margin of 26.9%
Its revenue was up 57% in the last quarter of 2007 over 2006, says Yahoo Finance
As of late 2007, its stock was up 53% in a year. The company has a market capitalization of $207.6 billion
Google controls 79% of the pay-per-click ad market, according to RimmKaufman
It controls 40% of all online advertising, according to web site HipMojo
Google employed almost 16,000 people at the end of 2007, a 50% increase over the year before
Google became the No. 1 brand in the world in 2007, according to Millward Brown Brandz Top 100

RapLeaf Statistics on Google's Open Social Platform end users and Facebook's users November 2007

OpenSocial platform are 61% female and 38% male

From Cog Web Design Don't Say Search Engine - Say Google August 2008

Search Hours (in turn taken from Nielsen's 2002)

Google -> 13 million hours
Yahoo -> 5.4 million hours
MSN -> 4.9 million hours

From Wikipedia List of Google Products checked 28th August 2008

There are roughly 150 Google products listed, spanning from desktop, mobile, mapping to search
Google has 34 Search products

From Google Blogoscoped How many employees does Google Have?

16805 full-time employees as of December 31st 2007

From ComputerWorld Opinion: Why Google has lost its Mojo -- and why you should care August 2008

Google's stock price has plummeted about 34% from more than $740 per share in November 2007 to about $490 early last week. That's even worse than the overall market: The Nasdaq fell 16% and the Dow 17% in the same period.
When Solyanik left Google, he had this to say about Google services such as Gmail and Google Docs: "There's just too much of it that is regularly broken. It seems like every week 10% of all the features are broken.... And it's a different 10% every week -- the old bugs are getting fixed, the new ones introduced."

2008/08/29 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

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Recent Comments

Kat on Engaging as a Company

I agree with you. There are some things that should ideally not be discussed by an employee in the public sphere.
Would a communications policy have stopped the said journo from speaking out? He/she must have known a huge risk was being taken? I suppose it's also an incredibly difficult thing to predict. The lack of control can be alarming.
I'm definitely interested in seeing a more specific list, so if you find it do share.
Thank you for your comments :). Here's hoping there's a good coffee shop close to you..
vincent on Engaging as a Company

I guess the mark of a well crafted brand starts at HR policy for new recruits - ensuring that they fit the brand's/corporate's persona. So in that sense yes you could argue that left to their own devices employees would, regardless of an online communications policy, communicate in a style the sponsor would approve of. Not sure if that's always the case but I'm inclined to agree with this generalization.
I think what is also important is that the individual writing within the bounds of a sponsor's site does so in a restricted locale. You can police your own domain if you're a corporate, you can't necessarily control the individuals mouth outside of it. For instance on twitter, personal blogs and forums. Owing to the nature of niche stardom you could argue that the employee comes to represent the brand, more so than that personifies the brand in organic conversation with consumers and would carry significant weight both within corporate sites and externally. Making some individuals very wary to write for their companies at all.
For instance in our not too distant past a prominent journo got the boot for publishing his gripes with his employers and their professional ability - he was promptly fired...He would no doubt have been policed on a company blog but owing to the fact that he chose to represent the company elsewhere he took his brand and the papers brand with him - dragging both through the mud as traipsed on towards epic-failuredom...
So to come back to a point, there is definitely a sense that the policies as listed above are quite ambiguous. Even you yourself suggest that requisite legalese is absent, and I have to assume that such legalese would include a fairly long list of do's and dont's. I have a list somewhere laying about which dictates in a very bland corporate fashion how to represent the brand in public - if I find it I will share it with you.
Perhaps its worthwhile to enforce points like "don't tell secrets" and my own favourite, "for the love of god don't gripe about the boss who you've publicly named online"...
That's my mental-riff for the day, I'm afraid I veered rather uncharitably off course but such is the nature of thought.
Now if only the company I worked for had some decent coffee!!
Kat on Engaging as a Company

Transparency is a key issue - as is allowing people to carve their own niche.
My thinking is that people engage with a personality - an individual personality - in conversation more than with a collective. It's just easier. A company personality surely reflects the people who work there as well as a crafted (constructed?) image that the stakeholders choose to present. While you want engagement it's not the same as speaking to an individual.
There are definite risks involved - but I would lean towards allowing people to carve a niche.
vincent on Engaging as a Company

Couldn't have said it better. Nice post, it is most certainly something corporates are going to struggle with. How much transparency is too much? Who should be allowed to represent a brand and to what extent should the individual be given the opportunity to carve their own niche rather than extol the virtues of the mother - brand?
Who knows. We shall soon see as this year pans out and we find out how the big media players tackle the rise of the cost effective digital media channel.
Kat on Engaging as a Company

It is a tough issue, and I can understand why you've never published. I would encourage you to do so though - you probably have a feeling for when your writing reflects your voice and when it doesn't - and the rewards are worth it.
Thanks for reading Wendy. :)

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Friday Fact Box - Google

by Katharina Scholtz

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