SWOT Analysis of Google Inc. and Apple Inc.

SWOT Analysis
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation
SWOT Analysis
(A) GOOGLE INC.
Google LLC is an American multinational company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States. Founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company has grown to become a giant in the technology industry. Google specialized in a wide range of Internet-related products. Google.com remains the most visited website across the globe. Over the years, Google has made acquisitions, engaged in partnerships, and made a chain of products beyond the core search engine. While the company’s products continue to find popularity in the world, Google is increasingly facing more problems that are legal and political. For Google to improve itself, it is critical to understand its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This SWOT analysis provides a better understanding of how the company can accomplish its objectives and deal with its challenges.
Strengths
Firstly, Google remains the most popular search engine on the web. While many search engines exist today that offer results based on keywords offer the best relevant results. There is no doubt that Google has become the most used search engine in the world. Google has dominated the search engine market with a current market share of 87.35%. The major competitor, Microsoft’s Bing accounts for 5.53% while Chinese search engine Baidu’s has a share of 0.7% (Statista, 2020a). Secondly, Google has a strong financial position. According to MarketLine (2013), this is because of increased cash from operations. In 2019, Google generated $134.81 billion from advertising. The firm generates online advertising revenue through the Google Ads platform (Statista, 2020b). The majority of Google’s total revenue came from advertising. In the most recent fiscal period, advertising accounted for 70.9% of the company’s revenues. Thirdly, Google is a household name all over the world. The company has some of the most popular products on the Internet like YouTube, Google Maps, Chrome, Android, and Gmail among others. According to data from Statista (2020c), Google is the third leading brand name in the globe as of 2020, with a value of about $160 billion. Google’s strong brand name is critical in ensuring that its products and services are less substitutable, hence allowing the company to generate higher returns while mitigating risks.
Weaknesses
Firstly, Google relies on a single source of revenue. By earning most of its revenue from advertising, the company is vulnerable to changing market trends. As more companies join the online advertising market, the company risks less income in the future. In the case of a dip in the advertising revenues, this would cost the company dearly. Secondly, the company faces criticism due to the censorship of search results, patent infringement, and the use of anti-competitive practices (Patterson, 2012). Such practices have adverse effects on the long-term reputation of the company. For instance, the use of anti-competitive practices has seen Google face harsh disciplinary measures in the European Union (Mendoza, 2016). Additionally, some of Google’s products have performed poorly in the market. For inst...