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Executive summary This report of Strategic Choice analyses and evaluates the different factors involved while devising the strategic choice for the Google Company. By employing various standard tools and approaches the Strategic Actions have been identified. The Strategic Actions help further to analyze and recommend the best possible strategic direction Google could go for, based on which mission statement and business objective has been proposed. Ansoff matrix tool has been employed. The Ansoff matrix presents the product and market choices available to Google. The four categories of Ansoff matrix include market penetration, product development, market development and diversification. All these have been discussed with respect to the Google Company. The four categories of Boston matrix have also been discussed. The four are Stars, Dogs, Questionnaires and the Cash cow. After completion of these tools, the sustainability acceptability and Feasibility framework has been discussed. This framework has also been elaborated based on Google. The final part discusses recommendations and conclusions. It has considered Google mission and Visions. This article provides detailed information on ways in which Google Inc. can improve and grow. It also shows, based on various discussed tools, the position or the state of Google Inc. at the point. Ansoff Matrix Ansoff matrix is a strategic marketing tool that links an organisation’s marketing strategy with its general strategic direction. The Ansoff matrix presents the product and market choices available to an organisation. It shows four options for growth by comparing existing and new products with existing and new markets, plotted on a matrix (Lafley and Martin, 2013). It helps to highlight the risk that a particular growth strategy may expose you to as you move from one section of the matrix to another. The four growth strategies are; market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. Google’s strategy is built on a strong foundation of broad differentiation of complementary products (Stine and Foster, 2010). Complimentary products serve to increase the use of the each of the other products and increase brand awareness. These products are the key to augmenting the company’s advertising business and expanding the breadth of the brand. Google can use the Ansoff matrix to determine the best strategy for increasing sales. The matrix can help Google decide how to do this by demonstrating options clearly, dividing them into the four strategies. Determining which of these is best for them will depend on a number of variables including available resources, infrastructure, market position, location and budget (Chopyak, 2013). Market penetration is simply selling more of the same products to existing customers. To do this, Google needs to find new ways to increase customer loyalty and grow customer lifetime values. Google reinforces its brand image by keeping its name in nearly all its products. From Google’s perspective, the more uses a person has for Google services, the more opportunity there will be to show them ads (Day, 2013). Google created mobile phone operating system built around the internet and integrating Google’s search and other web technologies into the device. This helps them interact with its customers which helps them sell more of their products. Market development refers to attracting new customers to existing products. New customers can be defined by their geographic location, or they can be an entirely new demographic. Google knows that an increase in the number of internet (or other information media) users will in turn bring more users to Google (Pride et al, 2011). This is why Google encourages free internet access with citywide Wi-Fi. By making some of their products easily available, such as their phone operating system, android, more customers today are able to meet a wide range of wants through the products and services Google offers (Magness, 2012). Product development is creating new products or variations of your products to sell to your present customers. Google’s goal is less about making money with their products and more about gathering information. The more data Google can gather and associate with a user account the more they can learn about what associations to make to give better relevance to their search product and the ads in the search interface (Liraz, 2013). With these data, Google can also easily identify customer needs and be able to sell new products to them. They can also vary products to meet customers need. Diversification is considered to be the highest risk strategy, this is selling new products into new markets (Day, 2013). Google mission statements “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” provides Google the opportunity to create its own microcosm of the world and opens the door to virtually limitless expansion. It has expanded globally, providing the premier search service in numerous languages and countries (Muchena et al, 2014). Google regularly explore kinds of diversification with new start-ups, with acquisition, and with strategic alliances. Google has a rule that employees can spend 20% of the time working on pet projects that are not part of their job description. Such motivation helps Google innovate and diversify into previously untapped businesses but usually still makes use of their core competencies and capabilities (Chopyak, 2013). In fact both Gmail and Google News started off as 20% projects. Google has in the past started organisations to leverage the power of alliances. One example is Open Social which allows developers to create applications that will work on all the member companies’ websites (Stine and Foster, 2010). Google’s diversification coupled with its ongoing promise to deliver on its strategy has been the key to its success. Google remains the top brand image in the market. Several of Google’s products are derived from acquisitions including Docs, Earth, and YouTube. These products have expanded Google’s brand and brought the previous users of these services to Google (Williams, 2001). Boston matrix The Boston Matrix is a more informal marketing tool used for product portfolio analysis and management, developed by the Boston Consulting Group in the early 1970s. It considers the degree of market share and market growth and helps identify where best to use resources to maximize profit from a product management perspective. There are four categories of Boston matrix; Cash cow, Dogs, Stars and Question marks (Pride et al, 2011). Cash cow are low-growth products with a high market share. These are mature, successful products with relatively little need for investment. The Search-Ad business is Google's Cash Cow, and at the moment makes all the profit Google earns - they have a very large (dominant) market share, but over time it is a slowing market (relative to the rapid growth of technology sectors and under increasing competitive pressure). They are thus doing what every company is advised to do in this position, i.e. to invest their surplus in faster growing industries and so keep up the pace. To this end their rate of acquisition has been phenomenal, not least because - by and large - their ability to launch their own successful products has so far been pretty lackluster (Lauriej, W & Joseph, 2012). Question marks are products with low market share operating in high growth markets. This suggests that they have potential, but may need substantial investment to grow market share at the expense of larger competitors. Most of Google's acquisitions tend to be in the Question Mark camp, small market shares but in rapidly growing markets. No doubt the strategic thinking is that the Google infrastructure will be able to rapidly ramp up the growth of these small companies. In the past, Google has been quite good at this, and refined the offerings before finally launching. The problem is that by and large it hasn't worked more recently, and many of the acquisitions have withered, finding themselves becoming less important (Liraz, 2013). Dogs refer to products that have a low market share in unattractive, low-growth markets. Dogs may generate enough cash to break-even, but they are rarely, if ever, worth investing in. These are plays that lose market share and/or the sector declines. Google places some bets early so the sector fizzles out, which is fine - low cost option plays are a creditable achievement. The problem is when too many Google acquisitions look like Jaiku, it was a decent competitor to Twitter but died as Twitter exploded, forcing Google into some far more high cost/high risk plays (such as Buzz) later in the day. Chrome could be a dog - the browser market is mature, they have a low market share - if the current consumer Ad campaign doesn't massively increase market share then it’s likely to be another failure (Muchena et al, 2014). Stars are high growth products competing in markets where they are strong compared with the competition. Often Stars need heavy investment to sustain growth. The aim of all the acquisitions is clearly to become Stars, those businesses that surpass the old business and launch Google into new areas. Gmail / Google Docs and YouTube are the current successes - but none of them make any money, in fact YouTube would be spectacularly bankrupt if it wasn't for massive subsidies. And Stars have to make money eventually - very large services that lose money are a millstone around any company, and may well attract regulatory attention for being anticompetitive. So right now, these aren’t real Stars, given their unprofitability they are more like black holes. So Google has to engineer something more here (Chopyak, 2013). SAF framework Johnson, Scholes and Whittington argue that for a strategy to be successful it must satisfy three criteria: sustainability, acceptability and feasibility. Sustainability deals with the overall rationale of the strategy. One method of assessing suitability is using a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis. A suitable strategy fits the organisation's mission, reflects the organisation's capabilities, and captures opportunities in the external environment while avoiding threats (Lauriej & Joseph, 2012). Acceptability considers whether the options meet and are consistent with the firm's objectives and are acceptable to the stakeholders. Feasibility assesses whether the organisation has the resources it needs to carry out the strategy. One method of analyzing feasibility is to conduct a break-even analysis, which identifies if there are inputs to generate outputs and consumer demand to cover the costs involved (Lafley and Martin, 2013). SAF based on Google Sustainability Google is an Internet company that primarily competes in the web search and online advertising markets. However, the company’s product portfolio is very diverse and includes both related and unrelated hardware and software products and services. Google dominates most of the markets it operates within, including online advertising, mobile operating system, and web search (Liraz, 2013). In spite of its market dominance Dependence on the Internet means that Google waits for Internet coverage to improve in developing countries before it could expand most of its operations, such as online advertising, in those countries. The company is also a mostly-online business, which means that it is weak in competing against firms with significant physical presence, like Apple. Google can exploit the current trend of increasing mobile device usage by offering mobile-friendly products (Williams, 2001). The company can also expand its Fiber coverage to generate more revenues for the business. In addition, the firm can boost its aggressiveness in offering consumer electronics, such as Google’s Nexus devices. The company faces tough competition. Competing firms include large ones like Yahoo and Apple, as well as start-ups and regional/national firms offering products similar to Google’s. Other firms can also imitate the company’s products, such as its Nexus consumer electronics (Pride et al, 2011). Acceptability Google’s vision statement is “to provide access to the world’s information in one click.” The company’s nature of business is a direct manifestation of this vision statement. For instance, Google’s most popular product is its search engine service. This product enables people to easily access information from around the world. Google’s vision statement has three variables, namely, world’s information, accessibility, and one click (Magness, 2012). The firm fulfills the world’s information component of the vision statement by crawling webpages. The company maintains databases containing indexes of these websites. Google fulfills the accessibility component by offering its search engine services to everyone around the world. The one click component of the vision statement refers to easy access to information. The firm fulfills this component by offering innovative products, such as the easy-to-use Google Search. Thus, the company effectively follows its vision statement. Google can use what if scenario analysis to see how a given outcome, such as expansion plans, might be affected by changes in particular variables, such as the competition or the unavailability of key personnel (Muchena et al, 2014). Feasibility Google’s mission, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” 1, speaks to their goals, but does not reflect the way they earn a profit. The statement definitely gives the company a future to strive towards, as it will be quite some time before all of the world’s information is easily accessible even though they have made great strides. The mission statement sets the company up as a resource that would be used by anyone who was doing research whether as part of a thesis or just a question out of curiosity (Day, 2013). The mission statement doesn’t give a timeline, it only states the end result. The mission statement is broad enough that it allows for Google to use any means possible to organize information. This means that they are neither limited to search nor are they limited to using the internet in its current form. Google is a relatively young company that has been public since August 2004. At that time, a share of the stock sold for a paltry $85 (Lauriej & Joseph, 2012). By late 2007, the stock had reached a high of around $750, a whopping 882% return in 3 years 3. The shares have now dropped down to the high $300 range 3 due to the recession the United States is currently experiencing. Google derives approximately 99% of its revenue from advertising 4. Most of its online products are free to use and are supported by text ads that are displayed within the interface 2. This begs the question of whether Google has a sustainable business model if in the future people begin to ignore internet-based advertisements (Magness, 2012). Recommendations It is recommended that Google should modify its vision statement and mission statement in accordance to the wide variety of products the company currently offers. The company now offers new products, such as Google Fiber and Google Glass. However, the company’s and vision statement and mission statement remain the same. Thus, the adjustment should reflect the current diversification of Google products. Ideally, the vision statement should depict the future condition of the company, with consideration for its diversified business. In relation, the mission statement should indicate Google’s aims in terms of such diversification. To address its weaknesses, Google must improve its physical presence, such as through promotions and opening of more physical stores. Based on this SWOT analysis, the firm must emphasize efforts against the threats of competition and imitation. Google can expect better performance upon effectively addressing the strategic factors identified in this SWOT analysis (Stine and Foster, 2012). Conclusion Google follows its mission statement and vision statement. The company is known for effective products, like Google Search, that satisfy the specifics of the firm’s vision statement and mission statement. The company’s leadership in the market satisfies the universal accessibility component of the mission statement by making Google’s products widely used. Innovative strategies contribute to the company’s capacity to maintain its leadership in the industry. This leading position empowers Google to continue following its mission statement and vision statement (Pride et al, 2011).