Case Study: Organizational Culture at Google

Source: https://www.mbaknol.com/management-case-studies/case-study-analysis-of-
organizational-culture-at-google/
Google Inc came to life with the two brilliant people as the founder of the company. Those two
were Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Both of them are a PhDs holder in computer science in
Stanford University California. In their research project, they came out with a plan to make a
search engine that ranked websites according to the number of other websites that linked to
that site. Before Google was established, search engines had ranked site simply by the number
of times the search term searched for appeared on the webpage. By the brilliant mind of Larry
and Sergey, they develop the technology called PageRank algorithm. PageRank is a link
analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of
documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance
within the set. All this in-depth research leads to a glorious day which is on September 15,
1997 where Google.com domain was registered. Soon after that, on September 4, 1998, they
formally incorporated their company, Google Inc, at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park
California. The name Google originates from “Googol” which refers to the mathematical
equivalent of the number one followed by a hundred zeros. In March 1999, the company moved
into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto. After that, the company leased a complex
of buildings in Mountain View. Ever since then, the location of the headquarter remain
unchanged.

Google’s core business is to provide a search engine for the cyber user who would like to go
to their desire site. The Google search engine attracted a number of internet users by its sleek
and simple design but result in amazing search result. After the initial stage of Google
establishing itself in the world, it began selling advertisements associated with the search
keywords. The advertisements were text-based in order to maximize the page loading speed.
Most of the Google Inc revenue relies on the advertisement and they had been successfully
with the help of AdWords and AdSense in their system. After having some experience in the
industry, Google itself launched its own free web-based email service, known as Gmail in 2004.
This service is established to meet the need of the cyber user in order to store and send their
document through online. In the same year, one of the most captivating technologies that
Google had launched is the Google Earth. Google Earth is an amazing creation that is a map
of the earth based on the satellite image. It requires you to type the desire location that you
want to view and it will process the image for you. Furthermore, Google Inc made a new
partnership with NASA with even enhances the Google technologies. Google also had its own
Google Video which allows user to search the internet for videos. One of the most important
things in the Google Inc is that they have a strong organizational culture which brings them
closer and stronger compare with other firms. The values that they emphasis on are creativity,
simplicity and innovation in order to gain competitive advantage against their competitor.

The Google Culture

Google is well known for their organizational cultures distinctiveness and uniqueness
compared to their immediate competitors. On the Google corporate website, they have listed
down 10 core principles that guide the actions of the entire organization. These are the values
and assumptions shared within the organization. These values are also termed as ‘espoused
values’, where it is not necessarily what the organization actually values even though the top
executives of the company embrace them.
In Google, the daily organizational life is distinctive and is one that thrives on informal culture.
The rituals that portray the organization’s culture as unique and possesses a small-company
feel are portrayed daily at lunchtime, where almost all employees eat together at the many
various office cafes while at the same time having an open, relaxed conversations with fellow
Googlers that come from different teams. Also, because one of the Google culture’s main
pillars are the pillar of innovation, every Googler are very comfortable at sharing ideas,
thoughts, and opinions with one another in a very informal working environment. Every
employee is a hands-on contributor and everyone wears several hats. Sergey and Brin also
plays a big part of laying the foundation on what the Google culture is and the founders have
continued to maintain the Google Way by organizing a weekly all-hands “TGIF” meetings for
employees to pose questions directly at them.
Here are some of a few of their core principles which will provide a look into Google’s
management philosophy and the type of culture they want to possess:
In Google, the motivated employees who ‘live’ the Google brand and are aligned to the
company call themselves ‘Googlers’. Even former employees of Google have a name which
they refer to themselves as ‘Xooglers’. This shows that in Google, their employees are so
involved in the organization that they have their own symbolic name that mirrors the
organization’s name and image, which is a sure sign of existing strong cultural values that are
present within the company.
After tremendous growth in Google, the organization moved from a humble office building in
Palo Alto, California back in its early days to its current office complex bought over from
Silicon Graphics. The complex is popularly known as the Googleplex, which is a blend of the
word ‘Google’ and ‘complex’. Googleplex is the result of a careful selection that serves to
establish Google’s unique and individualistic culture in the eyes of the employees and the
public. The corporate campus is built to provide a very fun, relaxed and colorful environment
both inside and outside. Innovative design decisions provides Google employees 2000 car lots
underground so that open spaces above and surrounding the building are filled with unique and
interesting architectures that includes an on-site organic garden that supplies produces for
Google’s various cafes, a bronze casting of a dinosaur fossil, a sand volleyball court, heated
“endless pools” and also electric scooters along with hundreds of bikes scattered throughout
the complex for Googlers to get to meetings across campuses. Googleplex is a significant
departure from typical corporate campuses, challenging conventional thinking about private
and public space. This also points out the alignment of values that are present in Google’s
culture such as innovation, fun, laid-back, creativity and uniqueness that clearly shows that
their organizational culture is truly unique and different from that of their competitors and other
organizations.
Within the Googleplex, a truly attractive, fun and extraordinary workplace environment exists
for Google employees. The interior of the headquarters is furnished with items like lava lamps
and giant rubber balls while sofas, Google color coded chairs, and pool tables can be found at
lounges and bar counters to express Google’s laid-back working atmosphere. The lobby
contains a grand piano and a projection of current live Google search queries. The employees’
various needs are also taken care of by facilities such as the 19 cafes on campus which serves
a variety of food choices for their diverse workforce, a gym, massage parlor, laundromats, and
even micro kitchens, which provides snacks for employees who want a quick bite. This ensures
that employees can be more productive and happier without ever leaving the workplace. A
manifestation of Google’s creative and innovative culture is shown by the unconventional
building design with high ceilings to let natural light in, durable floors made of tiny quartz
stones, working British phone booths splashed in Google colors, and lounges that also serve as
DIY libraries with cleverly placed low-reach book racks adorned with colorful Lego sets and
cubes. All these innovative, creative and colorful designs are symbols of Google’s unique
organizational culture that emphasizes on continuous innovation.
Google engages their employees by applying adaptive culture in the organization. From their
core competency in search engine technology, Google has responded to customers change in
needs by expanding onto the mobile market. The employees analyze, anticipate and seek out
the opportunities to improve the organization’s performance by being proactive and quick in
coming out with new technologies and solutions for mobile services. It aims to help people all
over the world to do more tasks on their phone, not to mention the several different ways to
access their Google search engine on a mobile phone. In addition, Google recently entered the
smartphone market by launching the Google Nexus One smartphone in response to customer’s
increasing need for smartphones, which is gaining ground on popularity because everyone is
going mobile in the Information Age. This is the result of Google employees’ common mental
model that the organization’s success depends on continuous change to support the
stakeholders and also that they are solely responsible for the organization’s performance. The
employees also believe that by entering into other markets beyond their core competency, the
change is necessary and inevitable to keep pace with an ever changing and volatile
technological market.
Google’s organizational culture places a huge importance of trust and transparency by having
an informal corporate motto namely “Don’t be evil”. This slogan has become a central pillar
to their identity and a part of their self-proclaimed core principles. It also forms the ethical
codes of the organization where Google establishes a foundation for honest decision-making
that disassociates Google from any and all cheating. Its ethical principles means that Google
sets guiding principles for their advertising programs and practices, which is where most of
their revenues come from. Google doesn’t breach the trust of its users so it doesn’t accept pop-
up advertising, which is a disruptive form of advertisement that hinders with the user’s ability
to see the content that they searched. And because they don’t manipulate rankings to put any
of their partners higher in their search results or allow anyone to buy their way up the
PageRank, the integrity of their search result is not compromised. This way, users trust
Google’s objectivity and their ethical principles is one of the reasons why Google’s ad business
had become so successful. The founders of Google believe strongly that ‘in the long term we
will be better served, as shareholders and in all other ways, by a company that does good things
for the world even if we forgo some short-term gains.’