Google (GOOG)

TOP CONTRIBUTORS

Matthew Martos

Dan Sacks

Ben Hur Gomez

Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG), a global information technology leader, specializes in how people access and interact with information. Google provides the leading search engine along with many online services such as Gmail, Adsense, and Chrome. In fiscal year 2010, Google reported $29.3 billion of revenues and $8.5 billion of net income. Google operates in over 50 countries with unique domain names for each country. Internet advertising is the fastest growing segment of the advertising market, but still only represents 8% of total U.S. advertising dollars -- suggesting considerable room for further growth. To tap these opportunities, Google has used the profits from its paid search business to support innovative projects such as Google Editions and the Android Market.

Interesting! Though IE has absolute dcianmnoe at the moment, one can notice that that gap is closing. A year back ~70% of our visitors were using IE. That figure has come down to ~50%. Chrome has a long way to go in terms of popularity!

Great article, thank you again for witring.

Competition

Although Google in its broadest perception has gained an unparalleled marketplace acceptance, in the narrower search market its competitors are Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT), which is currently expanding into the online search and advertising business within the US and Baidu.com (BIDU) in China. Yahoo, founded four years before Google, was historically the leading online search site, but in January 2009, Google made headlines by overtaking Yahoo in unique users per month. Relative to Yahoo!--and almost any company--Google's expenses are quite low. The expense breakdown suggests different priorities for the two companies: Google's highest cost sector is product development, at 9%, while Yahoo! allocated 20% of revenues for sales. And while Google spreads its costs evenly among the three principle areas, Yahoo!'s expenses are clearly concentrated in sales, with development and administration trailing far behind.

Because Microsoft has many sources of revenue beyond advertising, it is difficult to compare it in more detail to Google and Yahoo!.

With a plethora of social networking websites and platforms making their way onto the internet, Google faces stiff competition from websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and LinkedIn.

Google's Android smartphone operation system is also in direct competition with Apple (AAPL) , Microsoft (MSFT) and Research in Motion (RIMM) in the fast-moving, competitive smartphone market.

As Google expands into e-commerce and Local services using its Google Offers, Checkout, and Wallet , it is also encroaching on an estalished player in Groupon as well as Facebook's Deals.

Sources

46. Android GPS tracking 47. The Android Phone