Over the holidays, the writer read the book, The Google Way by Bernard Girard, no starch press, San Francisco, 2009. In the book, Mr. Girard looks at the management system to see how Google is run and then you can then link it to either your company or companies you follow. Could they or should they be more like Google?

Google is one of the best search engines in the world, and the company has kept the philosophy of putting users first, the rest will follow. Google has been trying to do this and as long as it keeps trying, people will continue to use it as a search engine. The last two posts looked at how Google is managed, given that Google is very successful, there are things to learn and pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together.

Google is a very analytical company, it measures and analyzes everything. As a company created by computer scientists trained in the discipline of math, Google clearly sees metrics as highly important. Nothing moves forward that is not backed up by data or can not be proven is prevalent with Google.In addition, with the peer review focus, Google has a decentralized approach to sharing information and ensuring it is distributed broadly within the company.

Every company that develops in size will have some flow chart problems in organizing their staff, Google has developed an flow chart that looks like a rosette or star polygon. Everyone in the company has a relationship to everyone else, which implies an ability to communicate with everyone. This ability to communicate can be done through internal blogs, small meetings (meetings greater than the ability for 2 pizzas to feed are too big).

Google does a number of things really well, the cost of ad sales is low, the search engine is great, many of its applications are wonderful. Google continues to define given the great information on the web how does a phrase or word come higher up in the search (allowing for most of us not to scroll through 10 pages to find what we are looking for) However, having wonderful applications does not necessarily translate into greater and greater revenues, so Google does have its problems to solve.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time to raising questions