Google's current 3 issues

In my opinion, Google’s current 3 issues are “Enterprise service”, “business in China”, and “management”. I would like to describe these 3 issues in detail.

1) Enterprise service

Google released “Google Apps” – SaaS application- to expand Enterprise application services about 3years ago. Recently, SaaS has gotten a lot of attention as business application and, to acquire high share in this market, Google penetrated in this business. But, Google’s recognition in enterprise market is still weak. When it comes to Google, many people image “search engine”, “gmail”, “youtube”, “google map”, “google earth”…etc… These are consumer oriented services and although these consumer services are well recognized, Enterprise services, like Google Apps, are not recognized well. I worked IT industry as an IT marketer in Japan, and promoted “SaaS” business by collaborating software vendors, like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Fujitsu, Oracle…. From my experience, many clients, though it may apply only in Japanese market, are not still so interested in Google Apps because of high price and low recognition of business application. They prefer other vendor’s services. In consumer market, Google has acquired high recognition and market share, but, in business market, Google is primitive. So, getting high recognition and market share in Enterprise service is Google’s issue.

2) business in China

Google was suffered from cyber attack in China and they contented with Chinese government about this issue. Finally, about 2months ago, Google decided to withdraw its search business in Chinese market. So far, the withdrawal of its services is only search business, but this service is Google’s core business and the withdrawal of huge market – China, which will lead world economy, will be a great impact on Google. To that end, in search business, the monopoly of baidu(“百度”) will more proceed in Chinese market. Personally I wanted Google to compete well with baidu and get top share in Chinese market, so it’s truly regretful. Other than search business, how Google develops its business in China is put on a show.

3) management

I admit Google is excellent company and its technologies/services are really innovative and contributed a lot to change our lives. But, I think, now, it has too many idea/technical oriented services & products, which may lead Google to fall between two stools. Certainly, many ideas/technologies themselves are really important, but, if they are not well managed to customer oriented services, they can’t become products of choice for many consumers and then they can’t sell well. To get high sales performance, stable management – sales strategy, marketing, customer oriented product planning, etc… is really important. For those companies which filled with affluent ideas/technologies, solid management is really required. If these are not well organized, excellent ideas/technologies will end up as mere gratification of the ego.
In that sense, I think Google should more focus on management to exploit their great ideas/technologies.