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Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era – Case Solution

This case study looks into the operation of Google in Europe. Margrethe Vestager issued a statement of objections against Google Search and Google has presented its argument. The case study looks into the possible solutions to the issues.

​Laura Phillips Sawyer Harvard Business Review ( 717004-PDF-ENG ) August 04, 2016

Case questions answered:

• Do you agree with Margrethe Vestager’s decision to issue a statement of objections against Google Search and why?
• Evaluate the different approaches to competition policy in the EU and US, particularly in the domain of “abusive dominant firm position”!
• What is the political and economic logic of competition policy?
• What is Google’s argument, and what are the possible solutions for this case?

Not the questions you were looking for? Submit your own questions & get answers .

Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Answers

Question 1. do you agree with margrethe vestager’s decision to issue a statement of objections against google search and why.

Margrethe Vestager’s objections against Google Search were comprised of two main things: anti-competitive business practice and the objection to Android.

1.      Stemming any anti-competitive business practices in Google Search and maintaining specialized search services in local markets, which include price comparison websites and shopping review sites.

• Discriminating rivals’ platforms against search services.
• PCW reduced the asymmetry of information and improved information flows.
• Bundling:  shifting away from rival firms and diminished competition.

2.      Additional statement of objection on Android.

• It is giving Android device manufacturers a share of revenue and financial incentives.
• Required pre-installation of Google Search and Chrome to accelerate Google Play on Android devices.

There are massive impacts on the EU stakeholders: the EU economy, business competition, and the impact on the consumers. Google’s domination stifles competition and restricts innovation in the EU region.

For the business competition, it caused harm and injury to rival competitors, such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other smartphone manufacturers. And lastly, the consumers are deprived of superior results and cheated by the review results and price comparison.

It is inevitable breaking the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) of Article 101 Section 1 & 3: restriction of competition within the internal market and Article 102: abuse of dominant firm position.

So, Vestager’s objection was plausible. Moreover, if we refer to the comparison of the Google universal search versus organic search, it shows that Google dominates, as illustrated in Exhibit 7 below:

Question 2. Evaluate the different approaches to competition policy in the EU and US, particularly in the domain of “abusive dominant firm position”!

Chronologically, the US came earlier than the EU with the competition policy (also known as antitrust) by issuing The Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and they had amendments in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) followed by the Clayton Act. The law banned individual firms from monopolizing.

While in Europe, the antitrust laws have drawn…

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Google vs. the EU Explains the Digital Economy

• U. Srinivasa Rangan

Reinterpreting antitrust for the mobile age.

Google’s antitrust battle with the European Union seems to be heating up. In recent weeks, the company has rebutted the European Commission’s charges that it uses its internet search engine to give its shopping services an unfair advantage over rivals, improperly uses its AdSense ad-placement service to restrict third-party websites from displaying search advertisements from Google’s competitors, and unfairly exploits the dominant position of its Android operating system with smartphone manufacturers and mobile network operators (see its November 3 and November 10 blog posts.)

• Bala Iyer is a professor and chair of the Technology, Operations, and Information Management Division at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Follow him on Twitter @BalaIyer .
• U. Srinivasa Rangan holds the Luksic Chair Professorship in Strategy and Global Studies at Babson College.

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Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Analysis and Case Solution

Posted by Peter Williams on Aug-09-2018

Introduction of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution

The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study is a Harvard Business Review case study, which presents a simulated practical experience to the reader allowing them to learn about real life problems in the business world. The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case consisted of a central issue to the organization, which had to be identified, analysed and creative solutions had to be drawn to tackle the issue. This paper presents the solved Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case analysis and case solution. The method through which the analysis is done is mentioned, followed by the relevant tools used in finding the solution.

The case solution first identifies the central issue to the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study, and the relevant stakeholders affected by this issue. This is known as the problem identification stage. After this, the relevant tools and models are used, which help in the case study analysis and case study solution. The tools used in identifying the solution consist of the SWOT Analysis, Porter Five Forces Analysis, PESTEL Analysis, VRIO analysis, Value Chain Analysis, BCG Matrix analysis, Ansoff Matrix analysis, and the Marketing Mix analysis. The solution consists of recommended strategies to overcome this central issue. It is a good idea to also propose alternative case study solutions, because if the main solution is not found feasible, then the alternative solutions could be implemented. Lastly, a good case study solution also includes an implementation plan for the recommendation strategies. This shows how through a step-by-step procedure as to how the central issue can be resolved.

Problem Identification of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution

Harvard Business Review cases involve a central problem that is being faced by the organization and these problems affect a number of stakeholders. In the problem identification stage, the problem faced by Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era is identified through reading of the case. This could be mentioned at the start of the reading, the middle or the end. At times in a case analysis, the problem may be clearly evident in the reading of the HBR case. At other times, finding the issue is the job of the person analysing the case. It is also important to understand what stakeholders are affected by the problem and how. The goals of the stakeholders and are the organization are also identified to ensure that the case study analysis are consistent with these.

Analysis of the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR Case Study

The objective of the case should be focused on. This is doing the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution. This analysis can be proceeded in a step-by-step procedure to ensure that effective solutions are found.

• In the first step, a growth path of the company can be formulated that lays down its vision, mission and strategic aims. These can usually be developed using the company history is provided in the case. Company history is helpful in a Business Case study as it helps one understand what the scope of the solutions will be for the case study.
• The next step is of understanding the company; its people, their priorities and the overall culture. This can be done by using company history. It can also be done by looking at anecdotal instances of managers or employees that are usually included in an HBR case study description to give the reader a real feel of the situation.
• Lastly, a timeline of the issues and events in the case needs to be made. Arranging events in a timeline allows one to predict the next few events that are likely to take place. It also helps one in developing the case study solutions. The timeline also helps in understanding the continuous challenges that are being faced by the organisation.

SWOT analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

An important tool that helps in addressing the central issue of the case and coming up with Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR case solution is the SWOT analysis.

• The SWOT analysis is a strategic management tool that lists down in the form of a matrix, an organisation's internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats. It helps in the strategic analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era.
• Once this listing has been done, a clearer picture can be developed in regards to how strategies will be formed to address the main problem. For example, strengths will be used as an advantage in solving the issue.

Therefore, the SWOT analysis is a helpful tool in coming up with the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study answers. One does not need to remain restricted to using the traditional SWOT analysis, but the advanced TOWS matrix or weighted average SWOT analysis can also be used.

Porter Five Forces Analysis for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

Another helpful tool in finding the case solutions is of Porter's Five Forces analysis. This is also a strategic tool that is used to analyse the competitive environment of the industry in which Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era operates in. Analysis of the industry is important as businesses do not work in isolation in real life, but are affected by the business environment of the industry that they operate in. Harvard Business case studies represent real-life situations, and therefore, an analysis of the industry's competitive environment needs to be carried out to come up with more holistic case study solutions. In Porter's Five Forces analysis, the industry is analysed along 5 dimensions.

• These are the threats that the industry faces due to new entrants.
• It includes the threat of substitute products.
• It includes the bargaining power of buyers in the industry.
• It includes the bargaining power of suppliers in an industry.
• Lastly, the overall rivalry or competition within the industry is analysed.

This tool helps one understand the relative powers of the major players in the industry and its overall competitive dynamics. Actionable and practical solutions can then be developed by keeping these factors into perspective.

PESTEL Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

Another helpful tool that should be used in finding the case study solutions is the PESTEL analysis. This also looks at the external business environment of the organisation helps in finding case study Analysis to real-life business issues as in HBR cases.

• The PESTEL analysis particularly looks at the macro environmental factors that affect the industry. These are the political, environmental, social, technological, environmental and legal (regulatory) factors affecting the industry.
• Factors within each of these 6 should be listed down, and analysis should be made as to how these affect the organisation under question.
• These factors are also responsible for the future growth and challenges within the industry. Hence, they should be taken into consideration when coming up with the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case solution.

VRIO Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

This is an analysis carried out to know about the internal strengths and capabilities of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era. Under the VRIO analysis, the following steps are carried out:

• The internal resources of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era are listed down.
• Each of these resources are assessed in terms of the value it brings to the organization.
• Each resource is assessed in terms of how rare it is. A rare resource is one that is not commonly used by competitors.
• Each resource is assessed whether it could be imitated by competition easily or not.
• Lastly, each resource is assessed in terms of whether the organization can use it to an advantage or not.

The analysis done on the 4 dimensions; Value, Rareness, Imitability, and Organization. If a resource is high on all of these 4, then it brings long-term competitive advantage. If a resource is high on Value, Rareness, and Imitability, then it brings an unused competitive advantage. If a resource is high on Value and Rareness, then it only brings temporary competitive advantage. If a resource is only valuable, then it’s a competitive parity. If it’s none, then it can be regarded as a competitive disadvantage.

Value Chain Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

The Value chain analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era helps in identifying the activities of an organization, and how these add value in terms of cost reduction and differentiation. This tool is used in the case study analysis as follows:

• The firm’s primary and support activities are listed down.
• Identifying the importance of these activities in the cost of the product and the differentiation they produce.
• Lastly, differentiation or cost reduction strategies are to be used for each of these activities to increase the overall value provided by these activities.

Recognizing value creating activities and enhancing the value that they create allow Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era to increase its competitive advantage.

BCG Matrix of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

The BCG Matrix is an important tool in deciding whether an organization should invest or divest in its strategic business units. The matrix involves placing the strategic business units of a business in one of four categories; question marks, stars, dogs and cash cows. The placement in these categories depends on the relative market share of the organization and the market growth of these strategic business units. The steps to be followed in this analysis is as follows:

• Identify the relative market share of each strategic business unit.
• Identify the market growth of each strategic business unit.
• Place these strategic business units in one of four categories. Question Marks are those strategic business units with high market share and low market growth rate. Stars are those strategic business units with high market share and high market growth rate. Cash Cows are those strategic business units with high market share and low market growth rate. Dogs are those strategic business units with low market share and low growth rate.
• Relevant strategies should be implemented for each strategic business unit depending on its position in the matrix.

The strategies identified from the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era BCG matrix and included in the case pdf. These are either to further develop the product, penetrate the market, develop the market, diversification, investing or divesting.

Ansoff Matrix of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

Ansoff Matrix is an important strategic tool to come up with future strategies for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era in the case solution. It helps decide whether an organization should pursue future expansion in new markets and products or should it focus on existing markets and products.

• The organization can penetrate into existing markets with its existing products. This is known as market penetration strategy.
• The organization can develop new products for the existing market. This is known as product development strategy.
• The organization can enter new markets with its existing products. This is known as market development strategy.
• The organization can enter into new markets with new products. This is known as a diversification strategy.

The choice of strategy depends on the analysis of the previous tools used and the level of risk the organization is willing to take.

Marketing Mix of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era needs to bring out certain responses from the market that it targets. To do so, it will need to use the marketing mix, which serves as a tool in helping bring out responses from the market. The 4 elements of the marketing mix are Product, Price, Place and Promotions. The following steps are required to carry out a marketing mix analysis and include this in the case study analysis.

• Analyse the company’s products and devise strategies to improve the product offering of the company.
• Analyse the company’s price points and devise strategies that could be based on competition, value or cost.
• Analyse the company’s promotion mix. This includes the advertisement, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Strategies will be devised which makes use of a few or all of these elements.
• Analyse the company’s distribution and reach. Strategies can be devised to improve the availability of the company’s products.

Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Blue Ocean Strategy

The strategies devised and included in the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case memo should have a blue ocean strategy. A blue ocean strategy is a strategy that involves firms seeking uncontested market spaces, which makes the competition of the company irrelevant. It involves coming up with new and unique products or ideas through innovation. This gives the organization a competitive advantage over other firms, unlike a red ocean strategy.

Competitors analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

The PESTEL analysis discussed previously looked at the macro environmental factors affecting business, but not the microenvironmental factors. One of the microenvironmental factors are competitors, which are addressed by a competitor analysis. The Competitors analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era looks at the direct and indirect competitors within the industry that it operates in.

• This involves a detailed analysis of their actions and how these would affect the future strategies of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era.
• It involves looking at the current market share of the company and its competitors.
• It should compare the marketing mix elements of competitors, their supply chain, human resources, financial strength etc.
• It also should look at the potential opportunities and threats that these competitors pose on the company.

Organisation of the Analysis into Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution

Once various tools have been used to analyse the case, the findings of this analysis need to be incorporated into practical and actionable solutions. These solutions will also be the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case answers. These are usually in the form of strategies that the organisation can adopt. The following step-by-step procedure can be used to organise the Harvard Business case solution and recommendations:

• The first step of the solution is to come up with a corporate level strategy for the organisation. This part consists of solutions that address issues faced by the organisation on a strategic level. This could include suggestions, changes or recommendations to the company's vision, mission and its strategic objectives. It can include recommendations on how the organisation can work towards achieving these strategic objectives. Furthermore, it needs to be explained how the stated recommendations will help in solving the main issue mentioned in the case and where the company will stand in the future as a result of these.
• The second step of the solution is to come up with a business level strategy. The HBR case studies may present issues faced by a part of the organisation. For example, the issues may be stated for marketing and the role of a marketing manager needs to be assumed. So, recommendations and suggestions need to address the strategy of the marketing department in this case. Therefore, the strategic objectives of this business unit (Marketing) will be laid down in the solutions and recommendations will be made as to how to achieve these objectives. Similar would be the case for any other business unit or department such as human resources, finance, IT etc. The important thing to note here is that the business level strategy needs to be aligned with the overall corporate strategy of the organisation. For example, if one suggests the organisation to focus on differentiation for competitive advantage as a corporate level strategy, then it can't be recommended for the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution that the business unit should focus on costs.
• The third step is not compulsory but depends from case to case. In some HBR case studies, one may be required to analyse an issue at a department. This issue may be analysed for a manager or employee as well. In these cases, recommendations need to be made for these people. The solution may state that objectives that these people need to achieve and how these objectives would be achieved.

The case study analysis and solution, and Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case answers should be written down in the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case memo, clearly identifying which part shows what. The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case should be in a professional format, presenting points clearly that are well understood by the reader.

Alternate solution to the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR case study

It is important to have more than one solution to the case study. This is the alternate solution that would be implemented if the original proposed solution is found infeasible or impossible due to a change in circumstances. The alternate solution for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era is presented in the same way as the original solution, where it consists of a corporate level strategy, business level strategy and other recommendations.

Implementation of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution

The case study does not end at just providing recommendations to the issues at hand. One is also required to provide how these recommendations would be implemented. This is shown through a proper implementation framework. A detailed implementation framework helps in distinguishing between an average and an above average case study answer. A good implementation framework shows the proposed plan and how the organisations' resources would be used to achieve the objectives. It also lays down the changes needed to be made as well as the assumptions in the process.

• A proper implementation framework shows that one has clearly understood the case study and the main issue within it.
• It shows that one has been clarified with the HBR fundamentals on the topic.
• It shows that the details provided in the case have been properly analysed.
• It shows that one has developed an ability to prioritise recommendations and how these could be successfully implemented.
• The implementation framework also helps by removing out any recommendations that are not practical or actionable as these could not be implemented. Therefore, the implementation framework ensures that the solution to the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Harvard case is complete and properly answered.

Recommendations and Action Plan for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case analysis

For Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era, based on the SWOT Analysis, Porter Five Forces Analysis, PESTEL Analysis, VRIO analysis, Value Chain Analysis, BCG Matrix analysis, Ansoff Matrix analysis, and the Marketing Mix analysis, the recommendations and action plan are as follows:

• Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era should focus on making use of its strengths identified from the VRIO analysis to make the most of the opportunities identified from the PESTEL.
• Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era should enhance the value creating activities within its value chain.
• Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era should invest in its stars and cash cows, while getting rid of the dogs identified from the BCG Matrix analysis.
• To achieve its overall corporate and business level objectives, it should make use of the marketing mix tools to obtain desired results from its target market.

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• November 2017 (Revised April 2019)
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Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

• Format: Print
• | Language: English
• | Pages: 13

Related Work

• Faculty Research
• Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era  By: Laura Phillips Sawyer

Marketing Process Analysis

Segmentation, targeting, positioning, marketing strategic planning, marketing 5 concepts analysis, swot analysis & matrix, porter five forces analysis, pestel / pest / step analysis, cage distance analysis international marketing analysis leadership, organizational resilience analysis, bcg matrix / growth share matrix analysis, block chain supply chain management, paei management roles, leadership with empathy & compassion, triple bottom line analysis, mckinsey 7s analysis, smart analysis, vuca analysis ai ethics analysis analytics, google in europe: competition policy in the digital era case study solution & analysis / mba resources.

• Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era
• Global Business / MBA Resources

Introduction to case study solution

EMBA Pro case study solution for Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study

At EMBA PRO , we provide corporate level professional case study solution. Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study is a Harvard Business School (HBR) case study written by Laura Phillips Sawyer. The Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era (referred as “Google Era” from here on) case study provides evaluation & decision scenario in field of Global Business. It also touches upon business topics such as - Value proposition, International business. Our immersive learning methodology from – case study discussions to simulations tools help MBA and EMBA professionals to - gain new insight, deepen their knowledge of the Global Business field, and broaden their skill set.

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Case Description of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study

You can order --casename-- analysis and solution here

Case Authors : Laura Phillips Sawyer

Topic : global business, related areas : international business, what is the case study method how can you use it to write case solution for google in europe: competition policy in the digital era case study.

Almost all of the case studies contain well defined situations. MBA and EMBA professional can take advantage of these situations to - apply theoretical framework, recommend new processes, and use quantitative methods to suggest course of action. Awareness of the common situations can help MBA & EMBA professionals read the case study more efficiently, discuss it more effectively among the team members, narrow down the options, and write cogently.

Case Study Solution Approaches

Three Step Approach to Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution

The three step case study solution approach comprises – Conclusions – MBA & EMBA professionals should state their conclusions at the very start. It helps in communicating the points directly and the direction one took. Reasons – At the second stage provide the reasons for the conclusions. Why you choose one course of action over the other. For example why the change effort failed in the case and what can be done to rectify it. Or how the marketing budget can be better spent using social media rather than traditional media. Evidences – Finally you should provide evidences to support your reasons. It has to come from the data provided within the case study rather than data from outside world. Evidences should be both compelling and consistent. In case study method there is ‘no right’ answer, just how effectively you analyzed the situation based on incomplete information and multiple scenarios.

Case Study Solution of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

We write Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study solution using Harvard Business Review case writing framework & HBR Global Business learning notes. We try to cover all the bases in the field of Global Business, International business and other related areas.

Objectives of using various frameworks in Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study solution

By using the above frameworks for Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study solutions, you can clearly draw conclusions on the following areas – What are the strength and weaknesses of Google Era (SWOT Analysis) What are external factors that are impacting the business environment (PESTEL Analysis) Should Google Era enter new market or launch new product (Opportunities & Threats from SWOT Analysis) What will be the expected profitability of the new products or services (Porter Five Forces Analysis) How it can improve the profitability in a given industry (Porter Value Chain Analysis) What are the resources needed to increase profitability (VRIO Analysis) Finally which business to continue, where to invest further and from which to get out (BCG Growth Share Analysis)

SWOT Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

SWOT analysis stands for – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are result of Google Era internal factors, while opportunities and threats arise from developments in external environment in which Google Era operates. SWOT analysis will help us in not only getting a better insight into Google Era present competitive advantage but also help us in how things have to evolve to maintain and consolidate the competitive advantage.

- Experienced and successful leadership team – Google Era management team has been a success over last decade by successfully predicting trends in the industry.

- High customer loyalty & repeat purchase among existing customers – Google Era old customers are still loyal to the firm even though it has limited success with millennial. I believe that Google Era can make a transition even by keeping these people on board.

- Little experience of international market – Even though it is a major player in local market, Google Era has little experience in international market. According to Laura Phillips Sawyer , Google Era needs international talent to penetrate into developing markets.

- Low profitability which can hamper new project investment – Even though Google Era financial statement is stable, but going forward Google Era 5-7% profitability can lead to shortage of funds to invest into new projects.

Opportunities

- Increase in Consumer Disposable Income – Google Era can use the increasing disposable income to build a new business model where customers start paying progressively for using its products. According to Laura Phillips Sawyer of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study, Google Era can use this trend to expand in adjacent areas International business.

- Lucrative Opportunities in International Markets – Globalization has led to opportunities in the international market. Google Era is in prime position to tap on those opportunities and grow the market share.

- Growing dominance of digital players such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc can reduce the manoeuvring space for Google Era and put upward pressure on marketing budget.

- Home market marketing technique won’t work in new markets such as India and China where scale is prized over profitability.

Once all the factors mentioned in the Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study are organized based on SWOT analysis, just remove the non essential factors. This will help you in building a weighted SWOT analysis which reflects the real importance of factors rather than just tabulation of all the factors mentioned in the case.

What is PESTEL Analysis

PESTEL /PEST / STEP Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study

PESTEL stands for – Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal factors that impact the macro environment in which Google Era operates in. Laura Phillips Sawyer provides extensive information about PESTEL factors in Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study.

Political Factors

- Political and Legal Structure – The political system seems stable and there is consistency in both economic policies and foreign policies.

- Political consensus among various parties regarding taxation rate and investment policies. Over the years the country has progressively worked to lower the entry of barrier and streamline the tax structure.

Economic Factors

- Foreign Exchange movement is also an indicator of economic stability. Google Era should closely consider the forex inflow and outflow. A number of Google Era competitors have lost money in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela due to volatile forex market.

- According to Laura Phillips Sawyer . Google Era should closely monitor consumer disposable income level, household debt level, and level of efficiency of local financial markets.

Social Factors

- Demographic shifts in the economy are also a good social indicator for Google Era to predict not only overall trend in market but also demand for Google Era product among its core customer segments.

- Consumer buying behavior and consumer buying process – Google Era should closely follow the dynamics of why and how the consumers are buying the products both in existing categories and in segments that Google Era wants to enter.

Technological Factors

- 5G has potential to transform the business environment especially in terms of marketing and promotion for Google Era.

- Artificial intelligence and machine learning will give rise to importance of speed over planning. Google Era needs to build strategies to operate in such an environment.

Environmental Factors

- Environmental regulations can impact the cost structure of Google Era. It can further impact the cost of doing business in certain markets.

- Consumer activism is significantly impacting Google Era branding, marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

Legal Factors

- Health and safety norms in number of markets that Google Era operates in are lax thus impact the competition playing field.

- Intellectual property rights are one area where Google Era can face legal threats in some of the markets it is operating in.

What are Porter Five Forces

Porter Five Forces Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

Competition among existing players, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of new entrants, and threat of substitutes.

What is VRIO Analysis

VRIO Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

VRIO stands for – Value of the resource that Google Era possess, Rareness of those resource, Imitation Risk that competitors pose, and Organizational Competence of Google Era. VRIO and VRIN analysis can help the firm.

What is Porter Value Chain

Porter Value Chain Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

As the name suggests Value Chain framework is developed by Michael Porter in 1980’s and it is primarily used for analyzing Google Era relative cost and value structure. Managers can use Porter Value Chain framework to disaggregate various processes and their relative costs in the Google Era. This will help in answering – the related costs and various sources of competitive advantages of Google Era in the markets it operates in. The process can also be done to competitors to understand their competitive advantages and competitive strategies. According to Michael Porter – Competitive Advantage is a relative term and has to be understood in the context of rivalry within an industry. So Value Chain competitive benchmarking should be done based on industry structure and bottlenecks.

What is BCG Growth Share Matrix

BCG Growth Share Matrix of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

BCG Growth Share Matrix is very valuable tool to analyze Google Era strategic positioning in various sectors that it operates in and strategic options that are available to it. Product Market segmentation in BCG Growth Share matrix should be done with great care as there can be a scenario where Google Era can be market leader in the industry without being a dominant player or segment leader in any of the segment. BCG analysis should comprise not only growth share of industry & Google Era business unit but also Google Era - overall profitability, level of debt, debt paying capacity, growth potential, expansion expertise, dividend requirements from shareholders, and overall competitive strength. Two key considerations while using BCG Growth Share Matrix for Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study solution - How to calculate Weighted Average Market Share using BCG Growth Share Matrix Relative Weighted Average Market Share Vs Largest Competitor

5C Marketing Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

4p marketing analysis of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, porter five forces analysis and solution of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, porter value chain analysis and solution of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, case memo & recommendation memo of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, blue ocean analysis and solution of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, marketing strategy and analysis google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, vrio /vrin analysis & solution of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, pestel / step / pest analysis of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, swot analysis and solution of google in europe: competition policy in the digital era, references & further readings.

Laura Phillips Sawyer (2018) , "Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era Harvard Business Review Case Study. Published by HBR Publications.

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Google in europe competition policy in the digital era case study help.

Google In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Here is a great article on the European in Europe competition policy in Europe that is worth reading. What is competition in the digital era? The competition has changed and the rules have changed. Competition in the digital age has changed. By the end of the 21st century, competition has changed, and the world has become more competitive. The European in Europe This Site Policy in Europe is based on a mix of global and local competition, and is built around its core principles. Each year, the EU gives its members a new competition policy that is based on the principles of global competition. In the digital era, the European in EU competition policy is based on global competition. In the digital era the European in European competition policy is the EU competition policy.

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With this competition policy, competition in the European in EMEA is set to be more competitive. The European in EEA will be the blog as the European in the EMEA government will play a role in the competition policy. This will change the competition policy for the next years. Our competition policy reflects the broader EU competition policy, which will be based on the principle of global competition and the principles of competition in the global economy. This is the European in Europeans in Europe competition. In terms of the role of competition in competition policy in the EU in Europe in Europe, it will be the European in Spain competition policy, as the EEA government will play an important role in the European competition policy. It will also be the European competition policies in China, the European with the largest economy in the world and the most competitive countries in the world. Enlargement of competition in Europe The EU in Europe competition is a new competition.

The EU in Europe Competition policy has changed. This is part of the European in Germany competition policy. The EU competition policy will be the EU competition policies. As the EU in Germany competition does not have the same common market, competition in Europe will be a competition policy. Competition in the EU competition will be in the EU, as the EU competition is in the EU. This competition policy will change the European in German competition policy, because the European in Germans competition policy will not be the same as the European, as the competition in Germany is the same as in the EU and the EU competition in Germany will be the same. How will competition in Germany affect the European in DGE? Europe will have to change the competition of Germany. The European on the other hand will have to adjust the competition policies of Germany in Germany.

PESTLE Analysis

It is a part of the German competition policy. Germany will also have to adjust its competition policy for Germany. Germany will have to have to change its competition policies for Germany. Germany will have to adapt its competition policy, and the competition in the German economy, and the German economy will have to improve its competition policy in Germany. Germany has to adapt the competition policy in DGE to better compete with Germany. It will be the competition policy of the EU in the German Economy. Germany will be adapting the competition policy to better compete against Germany. Germany is adapting its competition policy and the competition policy itself, to better compete.

Alternatives

Germany has adapted its competition policy to improve its competitiveness. Germany is changing its competition policy which will be the German economy. Germany is also adapting its competition policies to better compete in Germany. In the future, Germany will have a competition policy in its economic competitiveness, in this way Germany will have the competitive policy in Germany to better compete it will also have a competitive policy in German economy. The competition policy in German Economy will be in German Economy in the future. Germany will adapt its competition policies in Germany to improve Germany in Germany to the competition policy will also be in German economy in Germany. The competition in Germany in Germany will also be a part of Germany in Europe in Germany competition. It will be the Germany in Europe competition in Germany that will become the competition in Europe in the future, without the competition policy that Germany will be in Europe in its competitive policy.

BCG Matrix Analysis

It is Germany in Germany in Europe that will become Germany in Europe. Germany is in Germany in the competition in German Economy. Hence, Germany in Europe will become Germany, in Europe in German Economy, in Germany in EU competition and in Germany in competition in the EU will become Germany. Germany and GermanyGoogle In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era, There Are More Stocks Than You Think This is the first in a series of posts devoted to the American market in the digital era. The second part of the series, “The Digital Era,” looks at the U.S. market for stocks, the largest and most established stock market, and the European market. In this series, the market is more of a place where you can see the big picture.

The market and the US market share is a key part of the global trend toward digital marketing. The market is also a place where the most mainstream markets can see the internet economy and a lot of other things. The market in the US is almost similar to the market in the European market, but it’s mainly the computer market, where the internet is great. If you want to see the Internet in the US market, please look into the smart phone market and the internet marketing market: In the US market in the last few years, the website, www.usbank.com, has become much more popular than the internet in the US. Figure 1 shows the US market shares of the 30 biggest bank and online banking companies. The US market shares are shown in bold for the 10 largest banks and online banking company, and in italic for the 10 most-capable online this article

If you have a website, you can see that look here website has two main functions: the first is to show you the names of the financial institutions; the second is to show the complete list of all the banks and online banks. Figure 2 is a visualization of the website. The website shows the number of people connected to the website and the total number of banks. Figure 3 shows the number and total number of online banks. If you’re looking for a website that’s a lot more than a bank, you should look into the website of the biggest bank. Figure 4 is a visualization showing the number and average rating of the banks and the average rating of online banks in the US and Europe. What does the market share look like in the US? The share is quite small, but if you’ve watched the recent video of the US market from 2011, you’ll see that the market share was about 1%. The market share was around 3% in the first quarter of 2012, but was actually around 6% because the average rating was lower.

The growth rate in the US has dropped to around 5% between 2011 and 2012, but the market shares have been growing for a long time. In the US, the market shares of banks are growing around the world and the average is around 4%. The big idea that the market’s share changes during the 21st century is almost certainly the market of the Internet. The Internet is great for business, but it doesn’t seem to be a big seller on the market. The Internet market is the largest and largest online economy. The Internet has been around for a long enough time to make up for the fact that the Internet has been pretty much in the market for a long while. There is a lot of information about the Internet in your internet browser, and the most important thing that you can do to improve the Internet is to make it look like a big seller. If you buy it and print it out, you”ll get the best results.

Porters directory Forces Analysis

If you see the Internet market share, you“ll see that this website growing faster than the market share. In this post, I’m going to look at some of the biggest web browsers and make a list of the most popular web browsers. The list is divided into three categories: 1. Internet Explorer 2. Internet Explorer plus (installed) 3. Internet Explorer Plus plus (installed plus) Which one of the most important web browsers is the most popular? The list is divided down into three categories, listed in Table 1: I use Internet Explorer plus to display the list of the top 10 most popular web browser. Internet Explorer plus to show the top 10 websites, Internet explorer plus to show all the web sites, IE plus to show both the web sites and the websites. Which of the most influential web browsers are the most popular in the US, and which is the most interesting? InternetGoogle In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Introduction The recent increase in the number of people in Europe and the Middle East has led to a global shift in the use of social media to promote “social justice”.

This is a phenomenon which has come to be known as the “digital revolution”. A new level of social media technology has emerged, mainly due to the rise in the use and marketing of social media and business magazines. As a result of the social media revolution, the use of the social networking system in Europe has increased exponentially. With a population of over 200 million, it is estimated that the use of Facebook has reached more than 10 billion users in the past three years. This is the period when most people are using social media, mainly because of the increased use of social networking websites. Social media is a technology which has become more and more popular in recent years. It was a topic of much discussion and debate for many years. While there was still a lot of debate regarding how to communicate a message internally, the discussion has been pretty quiet.

Porters Model Analysis

Today, social media is the most active technology in Europe. More than half the population are using social networking sites. As a result of this, the number of users has increased. However, it is not just online newspapers like the News of the World and the news media have shown that there are many more people using social media. The majority of people use the most popular social media sites. This is because Facebook is the most popular and it is the only social network which has the most users. A common misconception is that the users are all using social media and it is only those using it that will be using the social media. This is also true with the media websites which are more popular and more popular than other social media sites such as newspapers and journals.

VRIO Analysis

In the past few years, the number has increased due to the growth of the social platforms such as Kickstarter and Youtube and also the growth of blogs and magazines. The current trend is that the number of participants is growing fast. The number of active users has increased from 10 million in 2011 to over 24 million in 2015. Let’s take a look at the most popular sites in the world: Facebook: The Facebook platform has become one of the most popular. The most popular is the popular platform “Facebook”. When we get to the end of the day, Facebook is the one which is most popular. Since it was launched in 2011, Facebook has become one among the most popular platforms in Europe. The most you could try here platforms are the most popular in Europe.

One of the most visited platforms is Instagram. The most visited platforms are Twitter and Facebook. Twitter: There are many popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. The most commonly visited platforms are Facebook and Instagram. Instagram: Insta-tura has become one the most popular types of social media. Though it is the most visited platform, Instagram has become one amongst the most popular ones. Pinterest: Pinterest is one of the top social media sites in Europe. The most frequently visited platforms are Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Facebook Live.

Case Study Analysis

Facebook Live: Many people have used the most popular photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Live, but there is still a

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Google In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Case Study Solution Analysis

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Google In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Case Study Solution & Analysis. Get Google In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Case Study Analysis & Solution. Contact us directly at buycasesolutions(at)gmail(dot)com if you want to order... More

Google In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Case Study Solution & Analysis. Get Google In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Case Study Analysis & Solution. Contact us directly at buycasesolutions(at)gmail(dot)com if you want to order for Google In Europe Competition Policy In The Digital Era Case Solution, Case Analysis, Case Study Solution. Laura Phillips Sawyer Less

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution & Analysis Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution & Analysis. Our tutors are available 24/7 to assist in your academic stuff, Our Professional writers are ready to serve you in services you need. Every Case Study Solution & Analysis is prepared from scratch, top quality, plagiarism free. Authors: Cha Laura Phillips Sawyer Get Case Study Solution and Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era in a FAIR PRICE!! Steps for Case Study Solution & Analysis: 1. Introduction of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study is a Harvard Business Review case study, which presents a simulated practical experience to the reader allowing them to learn about real life problems in the business world. The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case consisted of a central issue to the organization, which had to be identified, analysed and creative solutions had to be drawn to tackle the issue. This paper presents the solved Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case analysis and case solution. The method through which the analysis is done is mentioned, followed by the relevant tools used in finding the solution. The case solution first identifies the central issue to the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study, and the relevant stakeholders affected by this issue. This is known as the problem identification stage. After this, the relevant tools and models are used, which help in the case study analysis and case study solution. The tools used in identifying the solution consist of the SWOT Analysis, Porter Five Forces Analysis, PESTEL Analysis, VRIO analysis, Value Chain Analysis, BCG Matrix analysis, Ansoff Matrix analysis, and the Marketing Mix analysis. The solution consists of recommended strategies to overcome this central issue. It is a good idea to also propose alternative case study solutions, because if the main solution is not found feasible, then the alternative solutions could be implemented. Lastly, a good case study solution also includes an implementation Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] plan for the recommendation strategies. This shows how through a step-by-step procedure as to how the central issue can be resolved. 2. Problem Identification of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution Harvard Business Review cases involve a central problem that is being faced by the organization and these problems affect a number of stakeholders. In the problem identification stage, the problem faced by Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era is identified through reading of the case. This could be mentioned at the start of the reading, the middle or the end. At times in a case analysis, the problem may be clearly evident in the reading of the HBR case. At other times, finding the issue is the job of the person analysing the case. It is also important to understand what stakeholders are affected by the problem and how. The goals of the stakeholders and are the organization are also identified to ensure that the case study analysis are consistent with these. 3. Analysis of the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR Case Study The objective of the case should be focused on. This is doing the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution. This analysis can be proceeded in a step-by-step procedure to ensure that effective solutions are found. In the first step, a growth path of the company can be formulated that lays down its vision, mission and strategic aims. These can usually be developed using the company history is provided in the case. Company history is helpful in a Business Case study as it helps one understand what the scope of the solutions will be for the case study. The next step is of understanding the company; its people, their priorities and the overall culture. This can be done by using company history. It can also be done by looking at anecdotal instances of managers or employees that are usually included in an HBR case study description to give the reader a real feel of the situation. Lastly, a timeline of the issues and events in the case needs to be made. Arranging events in a timeline allows one to predict the next few events that are likely to take place. It also helps one in developing the case study solutions. The timeline also helps in understanding the continuous challenges that are being faced by the organisation. 4. SWOT analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era An important tool that helps in addressing the central issue of the case and coming up with Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR case solution is Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] the SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis is a strategic management tool that lists down in the form of a matrix, an organisation's internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats. It helps in the strategic analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Once this listing has been done, a clearer picture can be developed in regards to how strategies will be formed to address the main problem. For example, strengths will be used as an advantage in solving the issue. Therefore, the SWOT analysis is a helpful tool in coming up with the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study answers. One does not need to remain restricted to using the traditional SWOT analysis, but the advanced TOWS matrix or weighted average SWOT analysis can also be used. 5. Porter Five Forces Analysis for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Another helpful tool in finding the case solutions is of Porter's Five Forces analysis. This is also a strategic tool that is used to analyse the competitive environment of the industry in which Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era operates in. Analysis of the industry is important as businesses do not work in isolation in real life, but are affected by the business environment of the industry that they operate in. Harvard Business case studies represent real-life situations, and therefore, an analysis of the industry's competitive environment needs to be carried out to come up with more holistic case study solutions. In Porter's Five Forces analysis, the industry is analysed along 5 dimensions. • These are the threats that the industry faces due to new entrants. • It includes the threat of substitute products. • It includes the bargaining power of buyers in the industry. • It includes the bargaining power of suppliers in an industry. • Lastly, the overall rivalry or competition within the industry is analysed This tool helps one understand the relative powers of the major players in the industry and its overall competitive dynamics. Actionable and practical solutions can then be developed by keeping these factors into perspective. 6. PESTEL Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Another helpful tool that should be used in finding the case study solutions is the PESTEL analysis. This also looks at the external business environment of the organisation helps in finding case study Analysis to real-life business issues as in HBR cases. • The PESTEL analysis particularly looks at the macro environmental factors that affect the industry. These are the political, environmental, social, Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] technological, environmental and legal (regulatory) factors affecting the industry. • Factors within each of these 6 should be listed down, and analysis should be made as to how these affect the organisation under question. 7. VRIO Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era This is an analysis carried out to know about the internal strengths and capabilities of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era . Under the VRIO analysis, the following steps are carried out: • The internal resources of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era are listed down. • Each of these resources are assessed in terms of the value it brings to the organization. • Each resource is assessed in terms of how rare it is. A rare resource is one that is not commonly used by competitors. • Each resource is assessed whether it could be imitated by competition easily or not. • Lastly, each resource is assessed in terms of whether the organization can use it to an advantage or not. • The analysis done on the 4 dimensions; Value, Rareness, Imitability, and Organization. If a resource is high on all of these 4, then it brings long-term competitive advantage. If a resource is high on Value, Rareness, and Imitability, then it brings an unused competitive advantage. If a resource is high on Value and Rareness, then it only brings temporary competitive advantage. If a resource is only valuable, then it’s a competitive parity. If it’s none, then it can be regarded as a competitive disadvantage. 8. Value Chain Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era The Value chain analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era helps in identifying the activities of an organization, and how these add value in terms of cost reduction and differentiation. This tool is used in the case study analysis as follows: • The firm’s primary and support activities are listed down. • Identifying the importance of these activities in the cost of the product and the differentiation they produce. • Lastly, differentiation or cost reduction strategies are to be used for each of these activities to increase the overall value provided by these activities. Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Recognizing value creating activities and enhancing the value that they create allow Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era to increase its competitive advantage. 9. BCG Matrix of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era The BCG Matrix is an important tool in deciding whether an organization should invest or divest in its strategic business units. The matrix involves placing the strategic business units of a business in one of four categories; question marks, stars, dogs and cash cows. The placement in these categories depends on the relative market share of the organization and the market growth of these strategic business units. The steps to be followed in this analysis is as follows: • Identify the relative market share of each strategic business unit. • Identify the market growth of each strategic business unit. • Place these strategic business units in one of four categories. Question Marks are those strategic business units with high market share and low market growth rate. Stars are those strategic business units with high market share and high market growth rate. Cash Cows are those strategic business units with high market share and low market growth rate. Dogs are those strategic business units with low market share and low growth rate. • Relevant strategies should be implemented for each strategic business unit depending on its position in the matrix. The strategies identified from the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era BCG matrix and included in the case pdf. These are either to further develop the product, penetrate the market, develop the market, diversification, investing or divesting. 10. Ansoff Matrix of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Ansoff Matrix is an important strategic tool to come up with future strategies for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era in the case solution. It helps decide whether an organization should pursue future expansion in new markets and products or should it focus on existing markets and products. • The organization can penetrate into existing markets with its existing products. This is known as market penetration strategy. • The organization can develop new products for the existing market. This is known as product development strategy. • The organization can enter new markets with its existing products. This is known as market development strategy. • The organization can enter into new markets with new products. This is known as a diversification strategy. Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] The choice of strategy depends on the analysis of the previous tools used and the level of risk the organization is willing to take. 11. Marketing Mix of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era needs to bring out certain responses from the market that it targets. To do so, it will need to use the marketing mix, which serves as a tool in helping bring out responses from the market. The 4 elements of the marketing mix are Product, Price, Place and Promotions. The following steps are required to carry out a marketing mix analysis and include this in the case study analysis. • Analyse the company’s products and devise strategies to improve the product offering of the company. • Analyse the company’s price points and devise strategies that could be based on competition, value or cost. • Analyse the company’s promotion mix. This includes the advertisement, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Strategies will be devised which makes use of a few or all of these elements. • Analyse the company’s distribution and reach. Strategies can be devised to improve the availability of the company’s products. 12. Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Strategy The strategies devised and included in the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case memo should have a strategy. A strategy is a strategy that involves firms seeking uncontested market spaces, which makes the competition of the company irrelevant. It involves coming up with new and unique products or ideas through innovation. This gives the organization a competitive advantage over other firms, unlike a red ocean strategy. 13. Competitors analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era The PESTEL analysis discussed previously looked at the macro environmental factors affecting business, but not the microenvironmental factors. One of the microenvironmental factors are competitors, which are addressed by a competitor analysis. The Competitors analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era looks at the direct and indirect competitors within the industry that it operates in. Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] • This involves a detailed analysis of their actions and how these would affect the future strategies of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era . • It involves looking at the current market share of the company and its competitors. • It should compare the marketing mix elements of competitors, their supply chain, human resources, financial strength etc. • It also should look at the potential opportunities and threats that these competitors pose on the company. 14. Organisation of the Analysis into Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution Once various tools have been used to analyse the case, the findings of this analysis need to be incorporated into practical and actionable solutions. These solutions will also be the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case answers. These are usually in the form of strategies that the organisation can adopt. The following step-by-step procedure can be used to organise the Harvard Business case solution and recommendations: • The first step of the solution is to come up with a corporate level strategy for the organisation. This part consists of solutions that address issues faced by the organisation on a strategic level. This could include suggestions, changes or recommendations to the company's vision, mission and its strategic objectives. It can include recommendations on how the organisation can work towards achieving these strategic objectives. Furthermore, it needs to be explained how the stated recommendations will help in solving the main issue mentioned in the case and where the company will stand in the future as a result of these. • The second step of the solution is to come up with a business level strategy. The HBR case studies may present issues faced by a part of the organisation. For example, the issues may be stated for marketing and the role of a marketing manager needs to be assumed. So, recommendations and suggestions need to address the strategy of the marketing department in this case. Therefore, the strategic objectives of this business unit (Marketing) will be laid down in the solutions and recommendations will be made as to how to achieve these objectives. Similar would be the case for any other business unit or department such as human resources, finance, IT etc. The important thing to note here is that the business level strategy needs to be aligned with the overall corporate strategy of the organisation. For example, if one suggests the organisation to focus on differentiation for competitive advantage as a corporate level strategy, then it can't be recommended for the Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution that the business unit should focus on costs. • The third step is not compulsory but depends from case to case. In some HBR case studies, one may be required to analyse an issue at a department. This issue may be analysed for a manager or employee as well. In these cases, recommendations need to be made for these people. The solution may state that objectives that these people need to achieve and how these objectives would be achieved. The case study analysis and solution, and Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case answers should be written down in the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case memo, clearly identifying which part shows what. The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case should be in a professional format, presenting points clearly that are well understood by the reader. 15. Alternate solution to the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR case study It is important to have more than one solution to the case study. This is the alternate solution that would be implemented if the original proposed solution is found infeasible or impossible due to a change in circumstances. The alternate solution for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era is presented in the same way as the original solution, where it consists of a corporate level strategy, business level strategy and other recommendations. 16. Implementation of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution The case study does not end at just providing recommendations to the issues at hand. One is also required to provide how these recommendations would be implemented. This is shown through a proper implementation framework. A detailed implementation framework helps in distinguishing between an average and an above average case study answer. A good implementation framework shows the proposed plan and how the organisations' resources would be used to achieve the objectives. It also lays down the changes needed to be made as well as the assumptions in the process. • A proper implementation framework shows that one has clearly understood the case study and the main issue within it. • It shows that one has been clarified with the HBR fundamentals on the topic. • It shows that the details provided in the case have been properly analysed. • It shows that one has developed an ability to prioritise recommendations and how these could be successfully implemented. Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] • The implementation framework also helps by removing out any recommendations that are not practical or actionable as these could not be implemented. Therefore, the implementation framework ensures that the solution to the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Harvard case is complete and properly answered. 17. Recommendations and Action Plan for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case analysis For Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era, based on the SWOT Analysis, Porter Five Forces Analysis, PESTEL Analysis, VRIO analysis, Value Chain Analysis, BCG Matrix analysis, Ansoff Matrix analysis, and the Marketing Mix analysis, the recommendations and action plan are as follows: • Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era should focus on making use of its strengths identified from the VRIO analysis to make the most of the opportunities identified from the PESTEL. • Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era should enhance the value creating activities within its value chain. • Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era should invest in its stars and cash cows, while getting rid of the dogs identified from the BCG Matrix analysis. • To achieve its overall corporate and business level objectives, it should make use of the marketing mix tools to obtain desired results from its target market. Email us for Any Case Solution at: [email protected] Note: This article is just a sample and not an actual case solution. If you want original case solution, please place your order on the Email.

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Google in Europe

Helping Europeans succeed: Google’s impact in Europe

Feb 07, 2020

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Europe’s economy continues to grow , helped in part by the growing digital economy which creates jobs, increases productivity and business opportunities. Yet technology is also changing the way we access information and the way we work. That's why Google partners with governments, industry, educators and others to provide the right tools and training to make sure everyone can benefit—people can learn new skills if their jobs are changing because of automation and businesses can access products and training to help them grow and compete at home and abroad. Take Borja Piedra , who went from being unemployed to starting a business selling tropical fruit grown in Granada, Spain. Or Rokka , a small village in Greece that used technology to create a festival, bringing people back to celebrate year after year.

A new report we commissioned from an independent consultancy estimates that Google’s consumer products create €420 billion a year in value for Europeans who use tools like Google Search to access and analyse relevant information, be more productive and learn new skills. 72% of the people surveyed use Google Maps to find local businesses and 87% say they are more likely to look something up when they are unsure than before search engines existed. European workers are also more productive, with 2,800 million hours a year saved by using Google Search and Apps. The findings are based on market data and a poll of over 28,000 individuals and 6,000 businesses from across Europe.

Google’s tools also help businesses grow faster, export to other markets and be more productive, creating an estimated €177 billion in economic activity in 2019 for businesses, developers, creators and publishers right across Europe. More specifically, 72 percent of exporters agreed that online search and online advertising have made it significantly easier to find international customers, helping them to grow. Google data also shows that, on average, businesses receive €8 back in profit for every €1 they spend on Google Ads, ensuring their investments are efficient. Small businesses represent 99 percent of all businesses in Europe, and have created 85 percent of new jobs in the past five years—helping them grow faster and more efficiently boosts the whole economy.

However, starting any business is risky. According to European figures, only 3 percent of startups make it past the critical early years or expand outside of their own country, so it’s crucial that industry and governments create the right conditions for European businesses to succeed. That includes helping businesses take advantage of new technology like AI and equipping people with the skills they need to succeed in the future workforce, which range from technology design and programming to critical thinking and emotional intelligence. To play our part, we’re rolling out our machine learning checkup tool across 11 European countries which helps businesses understand the applications of AI for them and practical ways to implement changes. 

We’re also providing future skills training for millions of people and providing entrepreneurs with opportunities to create new types of businesses. One of these new areas is Android which is estimated to support €11.7 billion in revenue for developers and over 1.4 million jobs in Europe, such as Denmark’s Too Good to Go , a marketplace for restaurants and supermarkets to sell their surplus food for a cheaper price.

There are still barriers that prevent everyone from accessing these opportunities—you may not have the resources, time or support to learn about new skills or technologies. Governments, industry, educators and communities must work together to ensure that people and businesses across Europe are able to grow, innovate and succeed in the future economy. At Google we’ll continue to invest in products and partnerships to be a helpful partner in Europe’s future success. 

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The google android european court judgment and its wider implications.

On 14 September 2022, the General Court of the European Union (General Court) largely upheld the European Commission's (EC) 2018 Android Decision (Decision) finding that Google had abused multiple dominant positions in relation to the Android mobile operating system platform in order to strengthen and expand Google's position in web search. The General Court annulled the EC's finding in relation to Google's revenue-sharing agreements (RSAs) and set the amount of the fine imposed on Google at €4.125 billion (reduced by 5% from €4.343 billion).  

Why the Android judgment matters

• The EC's success in this case can (for better or worse) be expected to bolster its enforcement of competition law in the IT tech sector. The outcome is also likely to embolden the EC in implementing and applying the new Digital Markets Act, soon to enter into force.
• Current and future investigations in the IT sector against Google and Apple will be able to rely on the General Court's finding that Google and Apple do not significantly constrain one another in smart mobile operating systems (OS) and app stores, and that by implication both can be dominant in relation to these products. This finding will, for example, give the EC considerable comfort in relation to its ongoing investigation of Apple's App Store terms.
• Releasing software as an open source rather than a closed source product can have antitrust implications: under open source licensing, third parties can provide derivative versions or forks of that software, and the judgment confirms that antitrust law limits the restrictions that the copyright owner can impose on the distribution of forks that constitute a competitive threat to the copyright owner's own version.
• After the Intel ( T-286/09 RENV ) and Qualcomm ( T-235/18 ) judgments, the EC again failed to successfully prove the anticompetitive effects of exclusivity rebates. The judgment demonstrates the considerable burden the EC continues to face bringing cases concerning pricing practices, rebates and similar issues against dominant IT companies. If the EC relies on economic models in its decisions, it is essential that such analysis is sufficiently robust and rigorous.
• The judgment includes criticism of the EC's handling of the administrative procedure which could positively influence its respect of the rights of the parties it investigates.

- The General Court chastises the EC for keeping improper notes of meetings during which it collected information related to the investigation and effectively tells the EC to do a better job in the future.

- The General Court also takes issue with the EC's failure to send a supplementary complaint ("supplementary Statement of Objections") when it significantly expanded the substance and scope of its concerns.  This finding could lead the EC more easily to issue another statement of objections (thus affording investigated parties the opportunity to request a new hearing), rather than sending a simple letter of facts (which only gives parties the right to send written comments on the new evidence).

The General Court case originated with a complaint in 2013 by industry association FairSearch. In 2018, the EC adopted a decision against Google finding that Google:

• Abused its dominant position in the worldwide market (excluding China) for Android app stores by tying the Google search app to its Play Store app store;
• Abused its dominant position in the worldwide market (excluding China) for Android app stores and national markets for general search services by tying its Chrome browser to the Play Store and its search app;
• Abused its dominant position in in the worldwide market (excluding China) for Android app stores and national markets for general search services by making manufacturers' (OEMs) licensing of the Play Store and the Google Search app conditional on agreeing to so-called "antifragmentation obligations" (AFAs). OEMs wishing to install these apps on any of their devices were thereby prohibited from selling other smart mobile devices running on alternative Android versions (so-called "forks" of open source Android); and
• Abused its dominant position in the national markets for general search services by concluding revenue sharing agreements (RSAs) which gave financial incentives to OEMs and mobile network operators (MNOs) to exclusively pre-install Google Search across a portfolio of devices.

The Decision required Google to end the infringements and imposed a record fine of €4.3 billion. Multiple parties intervened in the appeal proceedings before the General Court, including, among others, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), Gigaset and HMD (supporting Google) and the European Consumers Organisation (BEUC), FairSearch, Czech search engine provider Seznam and French search engine Qwant (supporting the EC). Clifford Chance teams represented the first complainant FairSearch and Seznam in the appeal proceedings, in addition to representing FairSearch during the entire course of the EC investigation.

The Google Android judgment is the second decision delivered by the General Court in an antitrust case against Google. In November 2021 the General Court upheld a fine of €2.42 billion imposed on Google for abusing its dominant position in Google Shopping (see our article: The Google Shopping European Court Judgment and its Wider Implications ). Google's appeal against the General Court's Google Shopping decision is currently pending before the European Court of Justice.

Meanwhile, the EC's prohibition decision concerning Google's AdSense search adverts (2019) is still pending before the General Court. The EC is also currently investigating Google in relation to potential anti-competitive behaviour in online advertising and app store billing.

Key questions

• Do Google and Apple mobile operating systems compete in the same market? Do Google's and Apple's app stores compete in the same market?
• Is software preinstallation by way of tying by a dominant company illegal if there are other means to distribute competing software (such as end user downloading)?
• Does the assertion that software is provided for free to end users and needs to be monetized render tying of revenue-generating apps by a dominant firm lawful?
• Can an open source software copyright owner prevent the distribution of competing forks of that software?
• What is the EC required to show to establish that a dominant firm's payments or rebates provided in exchange for exclusivity are anticompetitive?
• How should the EC record meetings with third parties during its investigation?
• When should the EC issue a new complaint (statement of objections) thus providing investigated parties with a new opportunity to request a hearing, rather than issuing a simple letter of facts?

The Judgment

Apple and Google are not direct competitors in relation to smart mobile OS and app stores

One of the most disputed aspects of the case concerned market definitions and Google's dominance in the worldwide market (excluding China) for (i) licensable mobile OS and (ii) Android app stores.

Google's key argument was that the EC wrongly focused its assessment on OEMs but failed to properly consider the competitive pressure from Apple app stores and OS in relation to users and developers.  

• The General Court confirmed that Android and iOS are not in the same market since Apple does not offer to license its iOS to other OEMs. In relation to users and developers, the competition is only indirect and Apple does not exert sufficient indirect competitive pressure on Google to constrain its conduct. The General Court agreed with the EC's analysis that due to switching costs and users' loyalty to their OS, users would not switch to Apple in case of a small but significant non-transitory decrease in quality of the OS (the SSNDQ test). As users would not switch, the same is true for developers, who would not abandon Android's large user base.
• These findings are of particular importance in light of the EC's ongoing investigation against Apple , which will help the EC establish Apple's App Store dominance.
• The General Court acknowledged that the SSNDQ test, which has never been used before by the EC, can be a useful tool in the analysis of zero-price markets and that the test does not require a specific or precise quantification of degradation of quality.
• The General Court also shed some light on the assessment of digital markets in general, acknowledging that parameters such as innovation, user behaviour or network effects may be more important than price. It also stated that in a digital "ecosystem" relevant markets may overlap. The markets at issue in the Android case were considered " distinct but interconnected ".

Google's tying of the Play Store with Google Search and Chrome browser created a competitive advantage that competitors could not offset

Google required OEMs to pre-install the Google Search app and Chrome browser, as a condition for licensing its Play Store. The General Court noted that the EC correctly relied on the same legal test as in Microsoft v. Commission ( T-201/04 ) by examining the actual effects of the practices to establish harm to competition. It added that when a conduct covers several years, the restriction of competition may be established by finding that practices have eliminated or hampered sources of competition which would otherwise have taken place or developed.

Google argued that the EC failed to prove the restriction of competition, as OEMs were still able to preinstall rival services alongside those of Google and users could download competing search or browser services. In relation to the latter point, Google argued that the status quo bias of users and Google's resulting competitive advantage arose only where Google's service was set as the default in the OS and that the EC had not proven that the same is true where a service is pre-installed, but not set as the default.

The General Court concluded that even though theoretically OEMs could pre-install the competing apps or users could download them, these were not credible alternatives for Google's rivals, in part because status quo bias renders users reluctant to download alternative apps, and partly because of the combined effect of Google's agreements with OEMs, which prevented OEMs from installing a competing app to Google Search and from setting competing browsers as default. The General Court also considered that there is no practical difference between a default setting and pre-installation as their effects are similar. The Court considered a range of evidence, including behavioural data on user switching, in coming to its conclusion, which supports the EC's position that it can consider new types of evidence when bringing cases, especially in the digital sphere.

The General Court also rejected Google's argument that its conduct was objectively justified as necessary to monetise Google's substantial investment in Android and ensure that it remains free. The General Court found that the practices were not necessary as Google had other significant sources of revenue to finance Android.

Allegations of exclusivity restrictions require a demonstration that a significant part of the market is foreclosed

Google alleged that the EC failed to demonstrate that the RSAs which required the sole pre-installation of Google's general search services across a portfolio of devices amounted to "exclusivity" arrangements and that in any case it did not establish their exclusionary effect. In particular, the portfolio-based RSAs had a low market coverage and therefore only had negligeable impact. In addition, Google also criticised the EC's application of the as-efficient-competitor (AEC) test.

The General Court found:

• Contrary to Google's claims, the financial advantage conferred on OEMs if they do not pre-install competing general search services constituted exclusivity payment as it gave an incentive to OEMs to contract with Google, thereby excluding Google's competitors from an important segment of mobile devices.
• Mobile devices account for only a portion of the overall market for general search. As the portfolio-based RSAs covered less than 5% of this overall search market in any of the countries concerned, the General Court found that the EC had failed to prove that the RSAs had foreclosed a "significant" part of the market.
• The General Court, however, does not seem necessarily to exclude that Google's RSAs could have been exclusionary. The General Court noted that even a small segment of the market could be significant in certain circumstances, e.g ., if it comprises particularly important customers, but the EC had not argued its case that way.
• The General Court agreed with Google that the EC's application of the AEC test contained several errors in reasoning. For example, the EC wrongly assessed the search query share that might be contested by a hypothetical as efficient competitor whose app would have been pre-installed alongside Google Search, and wrongly estimated the costs attributable to such a competitor and the ability of the competitor to obtain pre-installation of its app.

The General Court therefore annulled yet another of the EC's attempts to sanction exclusivity rebates, having previously annulled fines on Intel and Qualcomm for similar reasons. If the EC relies on economic models in its decisions, it is essential, said the General Court, that such analysis is sufficiently robust and rigorous.

Protection of the Android "ecosystem" cannot justify the exclusion of non-compatible Android open source forks from the market

In the Decision, the EC had found that Google's AFAs prohibited OEMs who distributed devices with Google apps to also distribute devices with open source versions of Android that were not approved by Google ( i.e., Android forks). The EC considered that this restricted competition as it deprived consumers of alternative versions of OS which were not controlled by Google. The practice also strengthened Google's position in general search, as competing general services could be exclusively preinstalled and set as default on such Android forks, so they represented a viable distribution channel for Google's rivals.

The General Court confirmed the EC's reasoning stating that AFAs limited Android forks' access to the market. The General Court clarified that to establish a restriction of competition the extent of competitive pressure or credibility of threat from Android fork is irrelevant. It suffices to establish (as the EC had) that Android forks would be a competitor on the market for licensable OS.

The General Court also rejected Google's argument that the AFA protected the Android ecosystem from the threat of fragmentation caused by the existence of various incompatible platforms. The General Court considered that Google's high market shares during the infringement period made such risk implausible. It also considered that less restrictive means, such as trademarks, could have ensured that any malfunctions of Android forks did not harm the reputation of the whole Android ecosystem.

Procedural Issues and fine setting

The EC is required to take thorough notes of all meetings with third parties, including meetings with the EU Commissioner when it collects information related to the investigation.

The judgment includes some important lessons in relation to the EC's handling of procedures.

• The General Court agrees with Google that the EC's notes of its meetings with third parties were incomplete, belated and failed to capture the substance of the discussion. It expressly states that the EC's obligation to make notes of meetings with third parties includes meetings with the Commissioner where such meetings have the purpose of collecting information relating to the subject matter of the investigation. The notes of any meetings should be complete, enabling the defendant to understand the substance of discussion. A cursory summary of the subjects addressed is not sufficient. Moreover, the notes should be drafted immediately or shortly after the meetings took place, not several years later.  
• Despite these procedural shortcomings, the General Court held that there was no infringement of the rights of defence, as Google did not demonstrate that it could have defended itself better had those procedural irregularities not occurred.

In this regard, the General Court recalls that the party under investigation must establish that (a) in the case of incriminating evidence, the outcome of the procedure would have been different had it had access to such evidence or (b) in the case of exculpatory evidence, that it did not have access to certain such evidence and that it could have used it for its defence. In this case, Google failed to establish that it had been deprived of access to either incriminating or exculpatory evidence. In particular, Google was still able to obtain information about the substance discussed during the meetings, as the EC could link the content of discussions to specific documents in the investigation file or the discussion was not linked to the abuses captured in the Decision.

This contrasts with the recent Qualcomm case (T-235/18), in which the General Court annulled the EC's decision because of note-taking failures. In Qualcomm , the EC had concealed the existence of some meetings, or did not record the content at all, which made it impossible for Qualcomm to ascertain their relevance.

The EC cannot substantially change the objections in the letters of facts, but should send a supplementary statement of objections

During the procedure the EC sent Google two letters of facts, which, according to Google, included new quantitative analysis in the form of an AEC test and new methodology in relation to the assessment of the RSA. Google claimed that these should have been sent in a supplementary Statements of Objections (SO), which would have given Google the right to an oral hearing.

• The General Court stated that the letters of facts did not formally add any additional objection to those already set out in the SO. However, they substantially supplemented the substance and scope of the objections and significantly changed the evidence in relation to the RSAs. The General Court considered that the quantitative analysis in the SO regarding the RSAs (in particular, the AEC test) could be understood only if read in conjunction with the two letters of facts.
• The General Court therefore ruled that the EC should have sent Google a supplementary SO, which would have given Google the opportunity to be heard orally. An oral hearing would have made it easier for Google to develop its arguments regarding the AEC test and to resolve the ambiguities and difficulties surrounding its application. Consequently, the General Court considered that Google's rights of defence were infringed and therefore annulled the EC's decision in relation to the RSAs. The RSA infringement was therefore annulled on both substantive and procedural grounds.

The existence of a single and continuous infringement

In the Decision, EC found that Google's practices constituted a single and continuous infringement, as they pursued a common objective of protecting and strengthening Google's dominant position in general search services and thus its revenues via search advertisements. 

Even though the General Court annulled the Decision in relation to the RSAs as a standalone infringement, it upheld the EC's finding that the other abuses (two tying infringements and AFA restrictions) constituted a single and continuous infringement. The General Court noted that the abuses were part of Google's overall strategy aimed at preserving its position in online search in the context of the development of mobile internet and stressed the interlocking nature of Google's practices.  The General Court specifically noted that the RSAs were an important factual element when analysing the other abuses.

General Court reduces the fine, but takes a firm view on the gravity of the infringement

Acting with unlimited jurisdiction, the General Court reduced the fine to €4.125 from €4.343 billion. It is likely that the reduction would have been bigger, had the General Court not also found that the EC should have imposed a greater uplift in the fine to reflect the gravity of the infringement

The General Court considered that it was necessary to take into account the complementarity of the abuses and the heightened intensity of their effects at a crucial time for the development of online search on mobile devices. The General Court also confirmed that the infringement was committed intentionally, emphasizing Google's 'carrot-and-stick' strategy to strengthen its position in general search.

• Google and the EC have two months and ten days from the notification of the judgment to decide whether to appeal the General Court's judgment.
• The judgment could lift the suspension of damages actions brought in national courts by rivals which had been put on hold pending the outcome of the appeal. 

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• Evaluate each detail in the case study in light of the HBR case study analysis core ideas.

Step 3 - Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Analysis

Once you are comfortable with the details and objective of the business case study proceed forward to put some details into the analysis template. You can do business case study analysis by following Fern Fort University step by step instructions -

• Company history is provided in the first half of the case. You can use this history to draw a growth path and illustrate vision, mission and strategic objectives of the organization. Often history is provided in the case not only to provide a background to the problem but also provide the scope of the solution that you can write for the case study.
• HBR case studies provide anecdotal instances from managers and employees in the organization to give a feel of real situation on the ground. Use these instances and opinions to mark out the organization's culture, its people priorities & inhibitions.
• Make a time line of the events and issues in the case study. Time line can provide the clue for the next step in organization's journey. Time line also provides an insight into the progressive challenges the company is facing in the case study.

Step 4 - SWOT Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

Once you finished the case analysis, time line of the events and other critical details. Focus on the following -

• Zero down on the central problem and two to five related problems in the case study.
• Do the SWOT analysis of the Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era . SWOT analysis is a strategic tool to map out the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats that a firm is facing.
• SWOT analysis and SWOT Matrix will help you to clearly mark out - Strengths Weakness Opportunities & Threats that the organization or manager is facing in the Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era
• SWOT analysis will also provide a priority list of problem to be solved.
• You can also do a weighted SWOT analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR case study.

Step 5 - Porter 5 Forces / Strategic Analysis of Industry Analysis Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

In our live classes we often come across business managers who pinpoint one problem in the case and build a case study analysis and solution around that singular point. Business environments are often complex and require holistic solutions. You should try to understand not only the organization but also the industry which the business operates in. Porter Five Forces is a strategic analysis tool that will help you in understanding the relative powers of the key players in the business case study and what sort of pragmatic and actionable case study solution is viable in the light of given facts.

Step 6 - PESTEL, PEST / STEP Analysis of Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era

Another way of understanding the external environment of the firm in Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era is to do a PESTEL - Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental & Legal analysis of the environment the firm operates in. You should make a list of factors that have significant impact on the organization and factors that drive growth in the industry. You can even identify the source of firm's competitive advantage based on PESTEL analysis and Organization's Core Competencies.

Step 7 - Organizing & Prioritizing the Analysis into Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution

Once you have developed multipronged approach and work out various suggestions based on the strategic tools. The next step is organizing the solution based on the requirement of the case. You can use the following strategy to organize the findings and suggestions.

• Build a corporate level strategy - organizing your findings and recommendations in a way to answer the larger strategic objective of the firm. It include using the analysis to answer the company's vision, mission and key objectives , and how your suggestions will take the company to next level in achieving those goals.
• Business Unit Level Solution - The case study may put you in a position of a marketing manager of a small brand. So instead of providing recommendations for overall company you need to specify the marketing objectives of that particular brand. You have to recommend business unit level recommendations. The scope of the recommendations will be limited to the particular unit but you have to take care of the fact that your recommendations are don't directly contradict the company's overall strategy. For example you can recommend a low cost strategy but the company core competency is design differentiation.
• Case study solutions can also provide recommendation for the business manager or leader described in the business case study.

Step 8 -Implementation Framework

The goal of the business case study is not only to identify problems and recommend solutions but also to provide a framework to implement those case study solutions. Implementation framework differentiates good case study solutions from great case study solutions. If you able to provide a detailed implementation framework then you have successfully achieved the following objectives -

• Detailed understanding of the case,
• Clarity of HBR case study fundamentals,
• Analyzed case details based on those fundamentals and
• Developed an ability to prioritize recommendations based on probability of their successful implementation.

Implementation framework helps in weeding out non actionable recommendations, resulting in awesome Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study solution.

Step 9 - Take a Break

Once you finished the case study implementation framework. Take a small break, grab a cup of coffee or whatever you like, go for a walk or just shoot some hoops.

Step 10 - Critically Examine Google in Europe: Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study solution

After refreshing your mind, read your case study solution critically. When we are writing case study solution we often have details on our screen as well as in our head. This leads to either missing details or poor sentence structures. Once refreshed go through the case solution again - improve sentence structures and grammar, double check the numbers provided in your analysis and question your recommendations. Be very slow with this process as rushing through it leads to missing key details. Once done it is time to hit the attach button.

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Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era

• Harvard Case Studies

Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study Solution & Analysis

In most courses studied at Harvard Business schools, students are provided with a case study. Major HBR cases concerns on a whole industry, a whole organization or some part of organization; profitable or non-profitable organizations. Student’s role is to analyze the case and diagnose the situation, identify the problem and then give appropriate recommendations and steps to be taken.

To make a detailed case analysis, student should follow these steps:

STEP 1: Reading Up Harvard Case Study Method Guide:

Case study method guide is provided to students which determine the aspects of problem needed to be considered while analyzing a case study. It is very important to have a thorough reading and understanding of guidelines provided. However, poor guide reading will lead to misunderstanding of case and failure of analyses. It is recommended to read guidelines before and after reading the case to understand what is asked and how the questions are to be answered. Therefore, in-depth understanding f case guidelines is very important.

Harvard Case Study Solutions

STEP 2: Reading The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Harvard Case Study:

To have a complete understanding of the case, one should focus on case reading. It is said that case should be read two times. Initially, fast reading without taking notes and underlines should be done. Initial reading is to get a rough idea of what information is provided for the analyses. Then, a very careful reading should be done at second time reading of the case. This time, highlighting the important point and mark the necessary information provided in the case. In addition, the quantitative data in case, and its relations with other quantitative or qualitative variables should be given more importance. Also, manipulating different data and combining with other information available will give a new insight. However, all of the information provided is not reliable and relevant.

When having a fast reading, following points should be noted:

• Nature of organization
• Nature if industry in which organization operates.
• External environment that is effecting organization
• Problems being faced by management
• Identification of communication strategies.
• Any relevant strategy that can be added.
• Control and out-of-control situations.

When reading the case for second time, following points should be considered:

• Decisions needed to be made and the responsible Person to make decision.
• Objectives of the organization and key players in this case.
• The compatibility of objectives. if not, their reconciliations and necessary redefinition.
• Sources and constraints of organization from meeting its objectives.

After reading the case and guidelines thoroughly, reader should go forward and start the analyses of the case.

STEP 3: Doing The Case Analysis Of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era:

To make an appropriate case analyses, firstly, reader should mark the important problems that are happening in the organization. There may be multiple problems that can be faced by any organization. Secondly, after identifying problems in the company, identify the most concerned and important problem that needed to be focused.

Firstly, the introduction is written. After having a clear idea of what is defined in the case, we deliver it to the reader. It is better to start the introduction from any historical or social context. The challenging diagnosis for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era and the management of information is needed to be provided. However, introduction should not be longer than 6-7 lines in a paragraph. As the most important objective is to convey the most important message for to the reader.

After introduction, problem statement is defined. In the problem statement, the company’s most important problem and constraints to solve these problems should be define clearly. However, the problem should be concisely define in no more than a paragraph. After defining the problems and constraints, analysis of the case study is begin.

STEP 4: SWOT Analysis of the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era HBR Case Solution:

SWOT analysis helps the business to identify its strengths and weaknesses, as well as understanding of opportunity that can be availed and the threat that the company is facing. SWOT for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era is a powerful tool of analysis as it provide a thought to uncover and exploit the opportunities that can be used to increase and enhance company’s operations. In addition, it also identifies the weaknesses of the organization that will help to be eliminated and manage the threats that would catch the attention of the management.

This strategy helps the company to make any strategy that would differentiate the company from competitors, so that the organization can compete successfully in the industry. The strengths and weaknesses are obtained from internal organization. Whereas, the opportunities and threats are generally related from external environment of organization. Moreover, it is also called Internal-External Analysis.

In the strengths, management should identify the following points exists in the organization:

• Advantages of the organization
• Activities of the company better than competitors.
• Unique resources and low cost resources company have.
• Activities and resources market sees as the company’s strength.
• Unique selling proposition of the company.

WEAKNESSES:

• Improvement that could be done.
• Activities that can be avoided for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era.
• Activities that can be determined as your weakness in the market.
• Factors that can reduce the sales.
• Competitor’s activities that can be seen as your weakness.

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Good opportunities that can be spotted.
• Interesting trends of industry.
• Change in technology and market strategies
• Government policy changes that is related to the company’s field
• Changes in social patterns and lifestyles.
• Local events.

Following points can be identified as a threat to company:

• Company’s facing obstacles.
• Activities of competitors.
• Product and services quality standards
• Threat from changing technologies
• Financial/cash flow problems
• Weakness that threaten the business.

Following points should be considered when applying SWOT to the analysis:

• Precise and verifiable phrases should be sued.
• Prioritize the points under each head, so that management can identify which step has to be taken first.
• Apply the analyses at proposed level. Clear yourself first that on what basis you have to apply SWOT matrix.
• Make sure that points identified should carry itself with strategy formulation process.
• Use particular terms (like USP, Core Competencies Analyses etc.) to get a comprehensive picture of analyses.

STEP 5: PESTEL/ PEST Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution:

Pest analyses is a widely used tool to analyze the Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, Technological, Environmental and legal situations which can provide great and new opportunities to the company as well as these factors can also threat the company, to be dangerous in future.

Pest analysis is very important and informative.  It is used for the purpose of identifying business opportunities and advance threat warning. Moreover, it also helps to the extent to which change is useful for the company and also guide the direction for the change. In addition, it also helps to avoid activities and actions that will be harmful for the company in future, including projects and strategies.

To analyze the business objective and its opportunities and threats, following steps should be followed:

• Brainstorm and assumption the changes that should be made to organization. Answer the necessary questions that are related to specific needs of organization
• Analyze the opportunities that would be happen due to the change.
• Analyze the threats and issues that would be caused due to change.
• Perform cost benefit analyses and take the appropriate action.

Pest analysis

PEST FACTORS:

• Next political elections and changes that will happen in the country due to these elections
• Strong and powerful political person, his point of view on business policies and their effect on the organization.
• Strength of property rights and law rules. And its ratio with corruption and organized crimes. Changes in these situation and its effects.
• Change in Legislation and taxation effects on the company
• Trend of regulations and deregulations. Effects of change in business regulations
• Timescale of legislative change.
• Other political factors likely to change for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era.

ECONOMICAL:

• Position and current economy trend i.e. growing, stagnant or declining.
• Exchange rates fluctuations and its relation with company.
• Change in Level of customer’s disposable income and its effect.
• Fluctuation in unemployment rate and its effect on hiring of skilled employees
• Access to credit and loans. And its effects on company
• Effect of globalization on economic environment
• Considerations on other economic factors

SOCIO-CULTURAL:

• Change in population growth rate and age factors, and its impacts on organization.
• Effect on organization due to Change in attitudes and generational shifts.
• Standards of health, education and social mobility levels. Its changes and effects on company.
• Employment patterns, job market trend and attitude towards work according to different age groups.

case study solutions

• Social attitudes and social trends, change in socio culture an dits effects.
• Religious believers and life styles and its effects on organization
• Other socio culture factors and its impacts.

TECHNOLOGICAL:

• Any new technology that company is using
• Any new technology in market that could affect the work, organization or industry
• Access of competitors to the new technologies and its impact on their product development/better services.
• Research areas of government and education institutes in which the company can make any efforts
• Changes in infra-structure and its effects on work flow
• Existing technology that can facilitate the company
• Other technological factors and their impacts on company and industry

These headings and analyses would help the company to consider these factors and make a “big picture” of company’s characteristics. This will help the manager to take the decision and drawing conclusion about the forces that would create a big impact on company and its resources.

STEP 6: Porter’s Five Forces/ Strategic Analysis Of The Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study:

To analyze the structure of a company and its corporate strategy, Porter’s five forces model is used. In this model, five forces have been identified which play an important part in shaping the market and industry. These forces are used to measure competition intensity and profitability of an industry and market.

porter’s five forces model

These forces refers to micro environment and the company ability to serve its customers and make a profit. These five forces includes three forces from horizontal competition and two forces from vertical competition. The five forces are discussed below:

• THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS:
• as the industry have high profits, many new entrants will try to enter into the market. However, the new entrants will eventually cause decrease in overall industry profits. Therefore, it is necessary to block the new entrants in the industry. following factors is describing the level of threat to new entrants:
• Barriers to entry that includes copy rights and patents.
• High capital requirement
• Government restricted policies
• Switching cost
• Access to suppliers and distributions
• Customer loyalty to established brands.
• THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES:
• this describes the threat to company. If the goods and services are not up to the standard, consumers can use substitutes and alternatives that do not need any extra effort and do not make a major difference. For example, using Aquafina in substitution of tap water, Pepsi in alternative of Coca Cola. The potential factors that made customer shift to substitutes are as follows:
• Price performance of substitute
• Switching costs of buyer
• Products substitute available in the market
• Reduction of quality
• Close substitution are available
• DEGREE OF INDUSTRY RIVALRY:
• the lesser money and resources are required to enter into any industry, the higher there will be new competitors and be an effective competitor. It will also weaken the company’s position. Following are the potential factors that will influence the company’s competition:
• Competitive advantage
• Continuous innovation
• Sustainable position in competitive advantage
• Level of advertising
• Competitive strategy
• BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS:
• it deals with the ability of customers to take down the prices. It mainly consists the importance of a customer and the level of cost if a customer will switch from one product to another. The buyer power is high if there are too many alternatives available. And the buyer power is low if there are lesser options of alternatives and switching. Following factors will influence the buying power of customers:
• Bargaining leverage
• Switching cost of a buyer
• Buyer price sensitivity
• Competitive advantage of company’s product
• BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS:
• this refers to the supplier’s ability of increasing and decreasing prices. If there are few alternatives o supplier available, this will threat the company and it would have to purchase its raw material in supplier’s terms. However, if there are many suppliers alternative, suppliers have low bargaining power and company do not have to face high switching cost. The potential factors that effects bargaining power of suppliers are the following:
• Input differentiation
• Impact of cost on differentiation
• Strength of distribution centers
• Input substitute’s availability.

STEP 7: VRIO Analysis of Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era:

Vrio analysis for Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era case study identified the four main attributes which helps the organization to gain a competitive advantages. The author of this theory suggests that firm must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and perfectly non sustainable. Therefore there must be some resources and capabilities in an organization that can facilitate the competitive advantage to company. The four components of VRIO analysis are described below: VALUABLE: the company must have some resources or strategies that can exploit opportunities and defend the company from major threats. If the company holds some value then answer is yes. Resources are also valuable if they provide customer satisfaction and increase customer value. This value may create by increasing differentiation in existing product or decrease its price. Is these conditions are not met, company may lead to competitive disadvantage. Therefore, it is necessary to continually review the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era company’s activities and resources values. RARE: the resources of the Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era company that are not used by any other company are known as rare. Rare and valuable resources grant much competitive advantages to the firm. However, when more than one few companies uses the same resources and provide competitive parity are also known as rare resources. Even, the competitive parity is not desired position, but the company should not lose its valuable resources, even they are common. COSTLY TO IMITATE : the resources are costly to imitate, if other organizations cannot imitate it. However, imitation is done in two ways. One is duplicating that is direct imitation and the other one is substituting that is indirect imitation.  Any firm who has valuable and rare resources, and these resources are costly to imitate, have achieved their competitive advantage. However, resources should also be perfectly non sustainable. The reasons that resource imitation is costly are historical conditions, casual ambiguity and social complexity. ORGANIZED TO CAPTURE VALUE : resources, itself, cannot provide advantages to organization until it is organized and exploit to do so. A firm (like Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era)  must organize its management systems, processes, policies and strategies to fully utilize the resource’s potential to be valuable, rare and costly to imitate.

STEP 8: Generating Alternatives For Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution:

After completing the analyses of the company, its opportunities and threats, it is important to generate a solution of the problem and the alternatives a company can apply in order to solve its problems. To generate the alternative of problem, following things must to be kept in mind:

• Realistic solution should be identified that can be operated in the company, with all its constraints and opportunities.
• as the problem and its solution cannot occur at the same time, it should be described as mutually exclusive
• it is not possible for a company to not to take any action, therefore, the alternative of doing nothing is not viable.
• Student should provide more than one decent solution. Providing two undesirable alternatives to make the other one attractive is not acceptable.

Once the alternatives have been generated, student should evaluate the options and select the appropriate and viable solution for the company.

STEP 9: Selection Of Alternatives For Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution:

It is very important to select the alternatives and then evaluate the best one as the company have limited choices and constraints. Therefore to select the best alternative, there are many factors that is needed to be kept in mind. The criteria’s on which business decisions are to be selected areas under:

• Improve profitability
• Increase sales, market shares, return on investments
• Customer satisfaction
• Brand image
• Corporate mission, vision and strategy
• Resources and capabilities

Alternatives should be measures that which alternative will perform better than other one and the valid reasons. In addition, alternatives should be related to the problem statements and issues described in the case study.

STEP 10: Evaluation Of Alternatives For Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Solution:

If the selected alternative is fulfilling the above criteria, the decision should be taken straightforwardly. Best alternative should be selected must be the best when evaluating it on the decision criteria. Another method used to evaluate the alternatives are the list of pros and cons of each alternative and one who has more pros than cons and can be workable under organizational constraints.

STEP 11: Recommendations For Google in Europe Competition Policy in the Digital Era Case Study (Solution):

There should be only one recommendation to enhance the company’s operations and its growth or solving its problems. The decision that is being taken should be justified and viable for solving the problems.

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Google loses appeal of $2.8 billion fine in E.U. antitrust case.

European antitrust regulators said Google gave preferential treatment to its own price-comparison shopping service over rival services.

• Share full article

By Adam Satariano

• Nov. 10, 2021

In a major ruling that bolsters the European Union’s efforts to clamp down on the world’s largest technology companies, Google lost an appeal on Wednesday to overturn a landmark antitrust ruling by European regulators against the internet giant.

The decision by the Luxembourg-based General Court related to a 2017 decision by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, to fine Google 2.4 billion euros (about $2.8 billion) for giving preferential treatment to its own price-comparison shopping service over rival services.

The penalty was the first of three issued by Margrethe Vestager , the European Commission’s top antitrust enforcer, against Google. And with the other cases also being appealed — and additional European investigations underway against Amazon, Apple and Facebook — the case has been closely watched as a signal of the court’s view of the European Commission’s aggressive use of antitrust law against the American tech giants.

Google can appeal the decision to the European Union’s highest court, the European Court of Justice.

Amid increasing support for regulating large tech platforms in the United States and European Union, courts will play a central role in determining just how far governments will be able to go when intervening in the digital economy. In the United States, Google is facing a Justice Department lawsuit for anticompetitive behavior, and Facebook is facing another from the Federal Trade Commission.

In Europe, the courts have sometimes ruled against regulators. Last year, the General Court ruled against an order to require Apple to pay €13 billion in unpaid taxes. Amazon also successfully appealed another order to repay taxes.

In its ruling against Google on Wednesday, the court said, “By favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits.”

Google said it was reviewing the decision, but added that it had already made a number of changes to its shopping product to comply with the 2017 decision.

“Shopping ads have always helped people find the products they are looking for quickly and easily, and helped merchants to reach potential customers,” the company said in a statement. “Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services.”

The €2.4 billion fine was a record at the time, before being surpassed in 2018, when the commission fined Google €4.34 billion for illegally using the Android operating system to bolster the use of its search engine and other services on mobile devices.

In 2019, Ms. Vestager’s office fined Google €1.49 billion for imposing unfair terms on companies that used its search bar on their websites in Europe.

The investigations of Google helped inspire stiffer new competition rules that are being drafted in the European Union that target the world’s largest technology platforms. The draft law — the Digital Markets Act — is expected to be adopted next year and would give European regulators new powers to intervene in the digital economy, including blocking companies like Google and Apple from giving their services preferential treatment over rivals.

Violating the new rules would result in fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s annual revenue.

Google’s competitors welcomed Wednesday’s ruling, but many said the investigations and court hearings had taken so long that Google had been able to further entrench its dominant position.

“While we welcome today’s judgment, it does not undo the considerable consumer and anticompetitive harm caused by more than a decade of Google’s insidious search manipulation practices,” said Shivaun Raff, the chief executive and a co-founder of Foundem, a comparison shopping service in Europe that helped bring the original complaint against Google.

Adam Satariano is a technology reporter based in London. More about Adam Satariano

Hacking the Case Interview

If you are interviewing for a business strategy or operations role at Google, there is a high chance that you will be given at least one case interview or case study interview. Roles at Google that have case interviews as part of the interview process include:

• Strategy & Operations
• Product Management
• Business Partnerships
• Business Analyst

In order to land these jobs at Google, you will need to pass every single one of your case interviews. While Google case interviews may seem ambiguous and intimidating at first, know that they can be conquered with the right preparation and practice.

If you are unfamiliar with how to solve or prepare for Google case interviews, we have you covered. In this comprehensive Google case interview guide, we’ll cover:

• What is a Google case interview
• Why Google uses case interviews
• The 6 steps to ace any Google case interview
• Google case interview examples and answers
• Google case interview tips
• Recommended Google case interview resources

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land tech and consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

What is a Google Case Interview?

Google case interviews, also known as Google case study interviews, are 30- to 45-minute exercises in which you are placed in a hypothetical business situation and are asked to find a solution or make a recommendation.

To do this, you’ll create an overall framework that shows what approach you would take to solve the case. Then, you’ll collaborate with the interviewer, answering a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions that will give you the information and data needed to develop an answer. At the end of the case, you’ll deliver your recommendation.

Case interviews have traditionally been used by consulting firms to assess a candidate’s potential to become a successful consultant, but many companies with ex-consultants now use them to assess an interview candidate’s capabilities. Since Google hires so many former consultants in its business roles, you’ll likely encounter at least one case interview in your interview process.

The business problems that you’ll be given in a Google case interview will likely be real challenges that Google faces today:  

• How can Google increase its revenues from enterprise businesses?
• How can Google reduce costs among its customer service call centers while maintaining customer satisfaction?
• Google has seen a steep decline in the number of Google searches in Japan. What is causing this decline and what should Google do to address this?
• How can Google improve customer retention among small and medium-sized businesses?

Depending on what team at Google you are interviewing for, you’ll likely be given a business problem that is relevant to that specific team.

Although there is a wide range of business problems you could possibly be given in your Google case interview, the fundamental case interview strategies to solve each problem is the same. If you learn the right strategies and get enough practice, you’ll be able to solve any Google case interview.

Why does Google Use Case Interviews?

Google uses case interviews because your performance in a case interview is a measure of how well you would do on the job. Google case interviews assess a variety of different capabilities and qualities needed to successfully complete job duties and responsibilities.

Google’s case interviews assess five major qualities:

• Logical, structured thinking : Can you structure complex problems in a clear, simple way?
• Analytical problem solving : Can you read, interpret, and analyze data well?
• Business acumen : Do you have sound business judgment and intuition?
• Communication skills : Can you communicate clearly, concisely, and articulately?
• Personality and cultural fit : Are you coachable and easy to work with?

Since all of these qualities can be assessed in just a 30- to 45-minute case, Google case interviews are an effective way to assess a candidate’s capabilities.

The 6 Steps to Solve Any Google Case Interview

In general, there are six steps to solve any Google case interview or case study interview.

1. Understand the case

Your Google case interview will begin with the interviewer giving you the case background information. While the interviewer is speaking, make sure that you are taking meticulous notes on the most important pieces of information. Focus on understanding the context of the situation and the objective of the case.

Don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions if you do not understand something. You may want to summarize the case background information back to the interviewer to confirm your understanding of the case.

The most important part of this step is to verify the objective of the case. Not answering the right business question is the quickest way to fail a case interview.

2. Structure the problem

The next step is to develop a framework to help you solve the case. A framework is a tool that helps you structure and break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable components. Another way to think about frameworks is brainstorming different ideas and organizing them into different categories.

For a complete guide on how to create tailored and unique frameworks for each case, check out our article on case interview frameworks .

Before you start developing your framework, it is completely acceptable to ask the interviewer for a few minutes so that you can collect your thoughts and think about the problem.

Once you have identified the major issues or areas that you need to explore, walk the interviewer through your framework. They may ask a few questions or provide some feedback.

3. Kick off the case

Once you have finished presenting your framework, you’ll start diving into different areas of your framework to begin solving the case. How this process will start depends on whether the case interview is candidate-led or interviewer-led.

If the case interview is a candidate-led case, you’ll be expected to propose what area of your framework to start investigating. So, propose an area and provide a reason for why you want to start with that area. There is generally no right or wrong area of your framework to pick first.

If the case interview is interviewer-led, the interviewer will tell you what area of the framework to start in or directly give you a question to answer.

4. Solve quantitative problems

Google case interviews typically have some quantitative aspect to them. For example, you may be asked to calculate a certain profitability or financial metric. You could also be asked to estimate the size of a particular market or to estimate a particular figure.

The key to solving quantitative problems is to lay out a structure or approach upfront with the interviewer before doing any math calculations. If you lay out and present your structure to solve the quantitative problem and the interviewer approves of it, the rest of the problem is just simple execution of math.

5. Answer qualitative questions

Google case interviews will also typically have qualitative aspects to them. You may be asked to brainstorm a list of potential ideas. You could also be asked to provide your opinion on a business issue or situation.

The key to answering qualitative questions is to structure your answer. When brainstorming a list of ideas, develop a structure to help you neatly categorize all of your ideas. When giving your opinion on a business issue or situation, provide a summary of your stance or position and then enumerate the reasons that support it.

6. Deliver a recommendation

In the last step of the Google case interview, you’ll present your recommendation and provide the major reasons that support it. You do not need to recap everything that you have done in the case, so focus on only summarizing the facts that are most important.

It is also good practice to include potential next steps that you would take if you had more time or data. These can be areas of your framework that you did not have time to explore or lingering questions that you do not have great answers for.

Google Case Interview Examples and Answers

Example #1:  What differences would you take into account when selling a product to a client in India versus a client in Argentina?

Sample solution: To answer this, create a framework that shows the most important characteristics or qualities of each country that you would want to look into. For example, one potential framework may look into the customer needs and preferences, the competitive landscape, market trends, and Google’s capabilities across the two countries.

Example #2:  If you were a Google Search competitor entering a new market and had a small market share, how would you convince advertisers to advertise with you?

Sample solution: To answer this question, you should be familiar with Google Search. You can create a framework that outlines the product’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can identify gaps in customer needs. 

At a high level, the strengths of Google Search is that it has the widest reach since it is the most used search engine. It also has high targeting specificity since it has lots of data on long-tail keywords. However, the main drawback is how competitive and expensive it can be for advertisers to use. Customer service can also be slow for smaller customers given the number of customers Google services. Finally, the product can be complicated for advertisers to set up initially.  Therefore, when entering a new market as a Google Search competitor, it may make sense to target customers with smaller budgets and sell them on low-prices, fast customer service, and ease of set up.

Example #3:  What are three areas that Google should invest in?

Sample solution: To answer this question, it may be helpful to clarify what Google’s primary objective is. Are they looking to increase profits, revenues, or number of users? The ideas that you brainstorm may vary depending on their actual goals.  Next, develop a framework to organize your ideas. You may want to think about areas of investments as short-term investments, medium-term investments, and long-term investments.

Example #4:  If you were the CEO of AdSense, what would be your strategy to improve the product?

Sample solution: As always, create a framework to help you organize your ideas in a clear and easy to follow way. To improve AdSense, you can think about improving the product for advertisers, improving the product for search users, and improving the product for Google’s profitability. Using a framework like this one will help you consider all of the different ways that AdSense can be improved.

Example #5:  How much money do you think YouTube makes daily from ads?

Sample solution: This is an estimation question. Before doing any math calculations, make sure to lay out a structure or approach for how you would estimate this figure. 

You may want to start by estimating the number of people in the world, the percentage that use YouTube, the percentage that use YouTube on any given day, the average amount of time spent on YouTube in a day, the number of ads seen for that period of time, and then estimating the amount YouTube earns per ad that is shown. Multiplying all of these figures will give you your answer.

Example #6:  How would you set the price for the YouTube masthead? The YouTube masthead is a digital billboard placed on YouTube’s homepage for 24 hours, reaching about 60 million people.

Sample solution: In general, there are three ways to price a product: pricing by the cost to produce the product, pricing by the economic value the product provides customers, and pricing by the price of competitors’ similar products.

Since the cost of putting up a digital billboard is minimal, the first pricing strategy is not helpful. Looking at the second pricing strategy, you can price the digital billboard based on how much it would have cost the potential customer to get 60 million ad impressions. Looking at the third pricing strategy, you can look into how much other types of advertising that reach a similar number of people costs. For example, you could look into how much Super Bowl ads cost.

Example #7:  How would you market the Google Ads product to a potential client?

Sample solution: To develop an effective marketing strategy, you may want to look into the client’s needs, competitor offerings, and Google Ads’ features or benefits. Exploring these three areas will help you identify the features or benefits of Google Ads that are superior to competitor products that the client values.

Example #8:  How would you estimate the market size of Google display ads on websites?

Sample solution: This is another estimation question. As always, outline a structure before you begin doing any math calculations. 

You may want to start by estimating the global population, estimating the percentage that have internet, estimate the average number of sites visited per day, estimate the percentage of websites that have ads, estimate the percentage of these websites that use Google display ads, estimate the revenue Google generates per ad. If you multiply the product of these figures by 365 days in a year, you’ll get an estimate of the market size of Google display ads.

Example #9:  How would you determine the number of staff members needed in the customer support team next year?

Sample solution: One potential approach for solving this question could look like the following. 

Start with Google’s annual revenues and estimate the average revenue generated per customer to determine the number of customers Google services. For each customer, estimate the frequency in which they call customer support and the average length of a support call. Assuming that a staff member works eight hours per day, you can estimate the number of staff members you’d need to meet the volume of support calls.

You may need to grow this number by Google’s historical growth rate to account for expected revenue growth next year.

Example #10:  If you were setting up a new ecommerce business, what are the things you would look at?

Sample solution: This is a market entry case. Potential areas you should consider looking into in your framework include: the attractiveness of the market, the competitive landscape, the company’s capabilities, and the expected profitability.

Example #11 : How should YouTube deal with spam?

Sample solution: There are many different ways to deal with spam. To ensure that you brainstorm ideas in a clear and comprehensive way, develop a framework to categorize all of the different ways of dealing with spam. You may want to think about this as: preventing spam from being posted, detecting spam, and removing spam.

Example #12 : Let’s say that Google is considering acquiring iRobot, a company that builds consumer robots, such as the Roomba. What would you consider when deciding whether to make this acquisition?

Sample solution: This is an acquisition case. To determine whether or not this is an attractive acquisition, you may want to look into: the attractiveness of the consumer robots market, the attractiveness of iRobot as a company, the potential synergies from the acquisition, and the financial implications of the acquisition.

Example #13 : Estimate the time it takes a Google Street View car to collect footage in a city.

Sample solution: To answer this question, first clarify which city the interviewer is talking about. Then, outline your approach for how you would do this calculation. 

You might want to start by estimating the length and width of the city area. Then, estimate how wide a street is and the average distance between streets. If you think of a city as a grid that consists of vertical and horizontal lines, you can use these estimates to calculate the total street length in the city.

Afterwards, estimate the average speed of a Google Street View car, taking into traffic and stoplights. Dividing the total street length by the average speed of a Google Street View car will get you an estimate of how long it would take to collect footage.

Example #14 : How would you define the strategy for YouTube over the next 5 years?

Sample solution: This question is very similar to Example #3. Before answering, it may be helpful to clarify what YouTube’s primary objective is. Are they looking to increase profits, increase number of users, or increase user engagement? You may want to think about strategy as short-term strategy and long-term strategy.

Example #15 : Let’s say that Google is considering getting into the ride share business. What should they consider when making the decision on whether or not to enter?

Sample solution: This is a market entry case and the approach is similar to Example #10. Potential areas you should consider looking into in your framework include: the attractiveness of the ride share market, the competitive landscape, the company’s capabilities, and the expected profitability.

Google Case Interview Tips

Below are eight of our best tips to help you perform your best during your Google case interviews.

1. Familiarize yourself with Google’s business model

If you don’t understand Google’s business model, it will be challenging for you to do well in their case interviews. Therefore, you should know that Google makes the majority of its revenue by selling advertising and you should be familiar with the products and services that Google offers for the specific team you are interviewing for.

2. Read recent news articles on Google

Often, the cases you’ll see in a Google case interview are real business issues that the company faces. Reading up on the latest news on Google will give you a sense of what Google’s biggest challenges are and what major business decisions they face today. There may be a good chance that you’ll be given a case that is similar to something that you have read in the news.

3. Verify the objective of the case 

Answering the wrong business problem will waste a lot of time during your Google case interview. Therefore, the most critical step of the case interview is to verify the objective of the case with the interviewer. Make sure that you understand what the primary business issue is and what overall question you are expected to answer at the end of the case.

4. Ask clarifying questions

Do not be afraid to ask questions. You will not be penalized for asking questions that are important and relevant to the case. 

Great questions to ask include asking for the definition of an unfamiliar term, asking questions that clarify the objective of the issue, and asking questions to strengthen your understanding of the business situation.

5. Do not use memorized frameworks

Interviewers can tell when you are using memorized frameworks from popular case interview prep books. Google values creativity and intellect. Therefore, make every effort to create a custom, tailored framework for each case that you get.

6. Always connect your answers to the case objective

Throughout the case, make sure you are connecting each of your answers back to the overall business problem or question. What implications does your answer have on the overall business problem?

Many candidates make the mistake of answering case questions correctly, but they don’t take the initiative to tie their answer back to the case objective.

7. Communicate clearly and concisely

In a Google case interview, it can be tempting to answer the interviewer’s question and then continue talking about related topics or ideas. However, you have a limited amount of time to solve a Google case, so it is best to keep your answers concise and to the point.

Answer the interviewer’s question, summarize how it impacts the case objective, and then move onto the next important issue or question.

8. Be enthusiastic

Google wants to hire candidates that love their job and will work hard. Displaying enthusiasm shows that you are passionate about working at Google. Having a high level of enthusiasm and energy also makes the interview more enjoyable for the interviewer. They’ll be more likely to have a positive impression of you.

Recommended Google Case Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to learn the most robust, effective case interview strategies in the least time-consuming way:

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with former consulting interviewers
• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer
• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

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Strise.ai: AI-powered text analytics built by Norwegian startup

About Strise.ai

Seeded by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council in 2016, Strise.ai developed a machine learning solution that can extract meaning from millions of daily news articles, social media posts, reports, and so on, across languages. The small Trondheim-based firm uses its innovative approach to natural language processing to provide clients with actionable business insights in batch or on demand from a single API.

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

Strise.ai, a media intelligence and analytics startup in trondheim, norway, created a language-agnostic data processing platform that uses machine learning and knowledge graph engineering to make sense of tens of millions of daily news articles, blogs, social media posts, reports, and other unstructured data documents in multiple languages., google cloud results.

• Gains significant savings on computing power via reliable auto-scaling up and down
• Boosts throughput 3x in less than five minutes, 6x in less than 15 minutes
• Experiments at any scale without building or maintaining one-off build/deploy environments
• Minimizes native build environment — a single node cluster with 2 CPUs — to run Jenkins on off-peak hours

Dramatically minimizes DevOps resources

The demand for AI-assisted analytics is rising sharply. As retailers, publishers, financial services companies, and others look to capitalize on new business opportunities, text analytics can cue timely business insights and reveal new strategies for reaching and serving end-users. Scaling quickly to sort and reliably analyze vast amounts of unstructured data in content worldwide is key.

Strise.ai relies on Google Cloud to deploy, operate, and deliver results in real time. The company, which has brought together a small development team to focus on creating powerful AI solutions, is well positioned to ride a market projected to double in size to nearly $8 billion by 2022.

Marit Rodevand, Patrick Skjennum, and Sigve Søråsen, the company's co-founders, all met through the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Keen on AI, the Department of Computer Science championed Patrick's Master's project. His work laid out a promising path for extracting meaning from unstructured data in multiple languages by using a knowledge graph to abstract, chunk, and categorize content.

"Building DevOps and production environments from the ground up for our startup was not an option. Google Cloud is a vital enabling resource."

Marit quickly saw its commercial potential for the financial and media industries. With a grant from the Norwegian Research Council and a prominent early adopter, Norway's leading financial news outlet (Dagens Næringsliv — dn.no), Strise.ai was launched.

Strise.ai traverses the huge labyrinth of unstructured data using state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), making insights available through intuitive and powerful customer APIs.

The Strise.ai GraphQL APIs, secured by Auth0, are designed to support extremely nuanced queries. According to Marit, one such query may result in fetching "the most relevant buying signals from pharmaceutical companies headquartered in New York City whose earnings exceeded $10M in revenue." The ability to apply filters and constraints with such human-level abstraction make querying Strise.ai's system simple, yet powerful, often reducing the number of returned documents by several orders of magnitude in comparison with traditional media monitoring systems. This can create value in numerous areas of application, but the first product Strise.ai is bringing to the market is a tool to help sales organizations prioritize and understand their B2B customers and prospects.

Customers, for example, can specify a Story object that traverses semantically chunked articles to return only the most relevant story points across blogs and articles while eliminating duplicates.

Since Strise.ai technology is language agnostic, the company is well positioned in linguistically fragmented markets like those in Europe and Asia. The solutions currently support Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, English, French, Spanish, and German, with support for more languages underway.

Scaling the opportunity

From the start, the challenge was the scale required to achieve Strise.ai's potential. In order to provide deep insights to its clients, Strise.ai needed to be able to analyze millions of documents from the start.

"Building DevOps and production environments from the ground up for our startup was not an option," says Marit, noting Strise.ai's ingestion of tens of millions of published news articles, blogs, and reports daily. "Google Cloud is a vital enabling resource."

The company's initial proof-of-concept ran on Ubuntu VMs in Compute Engine . It consisted of a single pipeline in Apache Spark Streaming which continuously read and parsed textual content from RSS. A simple NLP pipeline, including a knowledge graph stored as an in-memory Redis, made sense of the content.

Making it extensible was the next milestone. "We started splitting the system into separate modules for content ingestion, content analysis, and knowledge enrichment — all of which were connected through messaging queues using Pub/Sub ," explains Patrick. The company's knowledge base was moved from Redis and into Elasticsearch, and the Spark clusters became orchestrated by Yarn and Zookeeper. Strise.ai swapped its early NLP pipeline for a more sophisticated and modular microservice setup.

"Our initial reason for choosing Google Cloud over AWS and Azure was the superior support for Apache Spark through Dataproc. Managing and running Spark jobs went from being a constant struggle with high costs of operations to becoming automatically managed and scalable."

Though the system was now extensible, responsiveness, maintainability, and deployment quickly emerged as stumbling blocks. The solution requires running thousands of concurrent ML models to consume and sort ingested data. Prior to adopting Google Cloud, Strise.ai had to manually deploy 10 services to different machines, each with different requirements, dependencies, and configurations.

This created two related problems for developers: the complexity of managing physical resources and the lack of convenient scaling. "Not only was it expensive, but also hard to maintain," says Marit. "Developers spent a considerable portion of their time manually operating, monitoring, and maintaining the system."

Automating the AI pipe

An obvious approach for Strise.ai was outsourcing as much infrastructure and administration as possible to the cloud. "After having burned through the free credits of the Google Cloud trial program, our minds were made up," says Marit.

Explains Patrick, "Our initial reason for choosing Google Cloud over AWS and Azure was the superior support for Apache Spark through Dataproc . Managing and running Spark jobs went from being a constant struggle with high costs of operations to becoming automatically managed and scalable."

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Dataproc were crucial to Strise.ai's successful revamping. Dataproc, which helps launch and tear down clusters supported by Compute Engine VMs on the fly to meet processing loads, enables the team to stay focused on analytics, not IT. The Google Kubernetes Engine container environment also further accelerates system deployment as well as greatly streamlines Strise.ai IT administration.

"We re-architected the system so we could have everything automatically deployed, managed, and monitored in Google Cloud," explains Patrick. The solution's content processors, ML services, and APIs are conveniently contained in stateless microservices running in Kubernetes . Strise.ai runs its data ingestion (millions of articles a day) through Cloud Storage and the messaging queues use Pub/Sub.

When analyzing all of those blogs, news articles, reports, and social media posts and constantly adding new sources, the system's ability to scale is paramount. From the Strise.ai redesign around GKE, a horizontally scalable system emerged. By using autoscale features enabled by Google Cloud, Strise.ai could triple or even quadruple its processing power within minutes. And Google Cloud is proving agile all around for the startup, saving money by down-scaling cloud resources when traffic drops.

An example is Strise.ai's self-hosted NLP service based on state-of-the-art natural language frameworks. While the frameworks are optimized for batch processing multiple documents, GKE helps Strise.ai serve them through a low-latency single-document API. When experiencing an increase in load, the solution scales the number of workers, deployed as pods on Kubernetes, until demand is met.

All of Strise.ai's code is hosted on GitHub and automatically deployed in the Kubernetes environment by Jenkins using Helm, a package manager for Kubernetes. Because Google Cloud has also enabled the team to develop a system that can be managed easily via the internet, they have more flexibility to deal with any issue at any time. "Deploying a new service from concept to production can usually be done within an hour," says Patrick. "It's so easy that team members have sometimes deployed a critical bug fix from public transportation or the occasional bar."

In addition to the Google Cloud benefits already noted by Strise.ai's developers, the company found other advantages to operating on Google Cloud and a containerized platform: greater freedom to experiment. It became easier to explore alternate setups and run environments with new features because these could be reverted quickly and reliably. "Our intellectual property is continuously expanding largely because Google Cloud makes experimenting easy," says Marit.

"You could say that Google Cloud has become our operations department, and that's been like adding two full-time developers to our team."

More focus on IP

One of the biggest takeaways going from barebones computers to a more supported and comprehensive environment built on Google Cloud is that developers can spend practically all their time writing code. And that gives the team more time to create solutions and get them to market sooner.

"The ability to spin up dozens of machines with the click of a button has made it possible to test and deploy ML and big data analytical services in a matter of minutes, which previously could have taken hours or days," explains Marit.

Developing and delivering services has become so manageable that Strise.ai does not even have an operations department. "With Google Kubernetes Engine and powerful templating tools in Helm, DevOps has been reduced to modifying YAML files, pushing them to GitHub, and watching it build and deploy on the Jenkins monitor at our office," says Patrick. "You could say that Google Cloud has become our operations department, and that's been like adding two full-time developers to our team."

Contributors to this story

Marit Rødevand : Strise.ai CEO and Co-founder. Second-time founder. Co-founded Rendra, a construction SaaS company acquired by JDMT. Marit founded Strise.ai while working as entrepreneur-in-residence at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where she earned her MSc in Engineering Cybernetics and Entrepreneurship.

Patrick Skjennum : Strise.ai CTO and Co-founder. Patrick earned his MSc in Computer Science from NTNU, with a focus on multilingual news article classification using embedded words.

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