Once a backyard operation run by a pair of college students in early 1996, Google has since expeditiously exploded into the most distinguished and authoritative super power on the internet. It has reduced the once acutely prominent Yahoo search engine into something currently struggling to maintain its market share, and has ruthlessly demolished anyone game enough to attempt to compete with its interests. With an utterly astounding and remarkably large portfolio of services, Google has grown beyond a simple search engine, currently offering approximately one hundred and nineteen products and services ranging from Google Earth (offering satellite imagery of the entire world), Gmail (the worlds second largest free web mail provider) to YouTube (the largest video sharing site on the web). The success of the company has also seen its name officially added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary. But you didn’t need me to tell you all that, because anyone unaware of these facts couldn’t have even been living under a rock for the last twelve years.

The success of Google stems from creativity and the ability to effectively cater to the needs of the masses - not from a cookie cutter website directed towards an already extremely saturated market (hint hint hint to the cookie cutter turn-key people ). Larry Page, and Sergey Brin knew that a search engine employing a page ranking system would naturally yield much more accurate results than what was currently available, and would consequently set them apart from their competition. In essence, these two college students effectively toppled the already established and successful corporations by simply taking an idea (a search engine) and enhancing it. While this article is geared more towards what we can learn from Google, I felt it’d also be ideal to dedicated a few sentences to the entire MySpace vs FaceBook saga. FaceBook employed the very same tactic as Google by effectively taking the concept of a social networking website and building upon it, and is now widely regarded as a superior alternative to MySpace.

Sometimes a lot of us are really just after the quick fix easy miracle and instant solution and don’t take the time to slow down and a look at the traditional techniques for success. Sure, there’s a million and one other things you can employ to yield quite a punch, but establishing a solid foundation like Google, FaceBook and even Apple among of a countless series of the most successful companies, is absolutely crucial to your long term success. All the marketing in the world cannot help you if your website and its content is a load of mumbo jumbo every average Joe is already using.

Google’s rise to stardom wasn’t driven by a massive smear campaign against the other search engines (oh boy do I miss the days of Excite, Lycos and Hotbot), nor was it driven by a link baiting strategy. It didn’t solely depend on another website to direct hoards of traffic to its shores, and It didn’t pull a massive stunt to attract attention to itself. It didn’t plaster the forums and blogs of the internet with spam comments linking to its product, and it didn’t sit back and expect things to magically work themselves. By employing an innovative service, world of mouth was what mainly shot Google up to a position which exceeded even the wildest imagination of its developers, and while that term is loosely thrown around these days, I think its safe to say that this can surely be deemed an exception.

I still remember how people used to excessively moan and groan back in the early days, when they’d struggle trying to generate useful results from fatally flawed search engines. It seems like yesterday when I’d hear the bi-weekly (and often weekly) search engine suggestion, assuring me another search engine would cater towards all my needs, and that the rest were becoming absolute because their lack of accuracy was finally about to catch up with them. Google wasn’t about honking its own horn because the masses were satisfied enough to gladly do it on behalf of the company.

It has always remained my opinion, that building excessive hype towards a service or product will always create standards one cannot possibly live up to, and would therefore prefer to wow my audience through the much beloved and traditional element of surprise. I believe Google has proved my opinion is indeed valid, workable and most probably practical for a majority of websites seeking to unload a new service into the overly saturated realms of the internet.

Renowned for its traditionally simplistic web layout, Google has never really been a fan of cluttering a service with a cluster of unnecessary and therefore pointless features. Aside from enabling users to effectively generate results without being forced to look a portal overfilled with a series of flashy advertisements and imagery, this has enabled the online giant to effectively stay focused on its core service - and while we do witness a string of advertisements when browsing through search results, I think it’s rather safe to say that Google doesn’t ram them down our throats. Webmasters, entrepreneurs, and circus trained monkeys, need to understand, that when offering a service or product - projecting a barrage of unwarranted features towards a user can only really generate confusion and a sense of frustration. Instead of forcing people to rummage through your website, and on that account waste time, handing your offering on a platter will typically lead to increased usage.

Google is considered one of the most ideal places of employment in the world, offering free gourmet lunches and dinners, massage chairs, an on-site masseuse, Google child care, a gift matching program (matching contributions of up to $3000 made to non profit organizations by employees), an on site doctor, free shuttle service, financial planning services, a car wash, gym, hair stylist, fitness classes, bike repair, dry cleaning, sauna, an outdoor volley ball court, roller hockey, ski trips and what in my opinion is genius - 20% development time, allowing employees to take one day a week to work on their own projects - among a series of other delicious perks. Google truly values its employees, and understands that they are the heart and sole of the corporation and therefore key to its success. There’s way too many websites out there who under value their employees, which obviously leads to a lack in motivation and moral, and if there’s anything you should soak in from this article, I’d strongly suggest this paragraph.