The Stakeholder Groups of Google

Discuss about the Challenges of Adopting Cloud Computing.

According to Grant (2016) the stakeholders of Google are highly diverse because the vast array of offered products by the company. The diversification of the company includes the original products of the company such as Gmail, Web Browser, YouTube, as well as new products like Google Ventures, Google Green, and Google.org. The stakeholders of Google come from different groups and through various businesses. If the company needs to maintain its leadership in the digital market, it should address the interest of its stakeholders through appropriate corporate social responsibility policies (Rothaermel 2015). The current CSR efforts of the company are quite comprehensive and satisfactory, although still there are opportunities to improve the CSR efforts to grow stronger in the international business arena.

The stakeholders are those people who have an impact on the business or are impacted by it. The stakeholders of Google are from different groups of shared interest, so several CSR policies of the company is focused towards these stakeholder groups (Peters et al. 2014). The most important stakeholders of Google are the users, advertisers, investors, employees, Governments and communities. These stakeholders affect the interest of the company by pushing their satisfaction range. Google considers its users to be the most significant stakeholders in terms of affecting the firm and effectively considers the interest of stakeholders to design and develop the CSR policies of the company. Like other big organizations, Google has also faced ethical issues; the concept of the firm was not being evil, after it was questioned regarding the privacy issues.

The individuals and the organizations using the services of Google are the user generally. However, the users do not pay for using the services like Chrome or Gmail or the search engine by Google, but this group is mostly interested in the usefulness of the company and its services. According to Mason and Simmons (2014), these stakeholders are the most significant for the company because they define the popularity of the company. The main problem aroused with the users of Google is the privacy issue. Nowadays modern technology lets the software systems like Google track the online activity of the users and might use those information to modify the advertisements and sell those to the marketers. Many customers feel that this is just a pay for using the free services provided by the company. However, Google states clearly in their privacy policy that how they collect the information of users and use them to stay transparent, there are gray areas arise regarding the use of information (Hörisch, Freeman and Schaltegger 2014). It might create legal and reputational problem for the general users. As far as the reaction of the company is concerned, they find the issue to be less complicated and simple because if an individual does something which he does not want others to know, he should not be doing the thing as well. Many surveys had shown that around half of the users of Google are concerned with the privacy issues while surfing internet (Sinclair 2016). 

Government Issues

Another ethical issue comes with tracking the information of users is that Google can provide any of that information to government anytime (Nissenbaum 2015). However this is crucial for the company in order to stay transparent. Many governments have asked for the user information to Google. It might be surprising that US government tops the list of asking users information from Google, even though the country has the largest population of Google users (Young and Kim 2015). It is very obvious that users do not feel good about governments using a private company to track the commoners. This is a clear instance of Google not implementing the same strategy for all the stakeholders.

The success of Google mostly depends on the advertisers and the investors. They are the primary source of the revenues of the company. Generally Google uses the personal information of the users to modify the advertisement shown to them. This is the primary issue regarding the privacy problem. This instance can also be the reason that Google does not use the same strategy to all its stakeholders.

Google is the most admired search engine on a regular basis since its start from 1998. Started from a small search engine, Google became one of the most profitable companies in the digital market and qualified as one of the best. However, what problem the users are facing now is the privacy policy of Google and the after use with the user information (Cortez and Hay 2014). However Google is trying to find new ways to protect the personal information of users and not exposing them to public.

Google can use its influence to resolve the issue and improve the lives of stakeholders. It can find methods to secure the personal data of users so that it does not get into wrong hands and get misused. The amount of power and resource the company has it can create secured files. As Google states in the privacy policy that even if they share any information to its partners the data cannot be identified. Therefore Google ensures that it has the capability of protecting the data of users and placing it in different folders. The company can respect the privacy and make profitability but Google is dealing with this issue for quite some time. As Google tracks the user information to modify the advertisements and other services offered to the user, it has a large stake on the privacy issues. Google has been trying to work on the update of their privacy policy and to comply with what the users searches and asks to appear. Google refurbished their privacy policy in 2012, and merged all the information that was gathered from users from several services of Google. The company drafted a letter to answer the questions rising and states that the users will have the option to turn off few features which collects the personal data of the users. Also, the policy states that it will not impact the information amount it collects or deletes and remains committed to the privacy of the user.

Respecting the privacy of the users and maintain the profitability of Google

If Google sticks to this new policy it will make the users very much comfortable in using the services of Google, as most of the users wants to ensure that their information do not reach in the wrong hands. However, there are many governments that restrict the usage of Google and the company has to abide by those rules and regulation as it works as a multination. For instance, when Google entered the digital market of China, the government blocked several search engines by Google (Campbell, Goldfarb and Tucker 2015). The company could not lose a great market but those rules caused plenty of problems with the search engine. Google had to leave the market because of a lot of pressure and moved its platform to Hong Kong.

The unified privacy policy of Google has allowed the search engine to manipulate the personal information gathered from the free services. There are several cases against Google due to the privacy issues challenging the acceptability of the policy. However, Google has to comply with the rules and regulations of certain country while entering the market.

Several users have sued the company for bypassing the security settings in their iPhones and Mac computers. Google have faced this problem from the very beginning as it tracks the data to tailor the advertisements. There are ample numbers of international and domestic laws that affect the business of the company. In addition, the rules and regulations regarding the privacy of users, freedom of expression, advertising, content, data security and intellectual property rights are debated and can be considered to adopt by many countries around the globe (Avram 2014). The US laws regarding the legal responsibility of online service providers for the online activities of their users have been tested by several claims that include slander, vilification actions, invasion of privacy and other unlawful activity based on the nature and material content. Several laws and new explanations of existing regulations might have impact on the business of Google. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not eliminate but limits the activity of listing or hosting the third party content which might include contents with infringes (Campbell, Goldfarb and Tucker 2015). The Child Online Protection Act and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act limits the sharing of materials that can be considered injurious to children, also pits additional restrictions on collecting data from children under thirteen (Cortez and Hay 2014).

Similarly, there are others laws that could impact the operations of Google and the business of their advertisers like financial services, online gambling, adult content and alcohol. The applications of these rules and regulations can impact on the business in an unexpected way and restrict the capability of delivering services to the users.

Reference List

Avram, M.G., 2014. Advantages and challenges of adopting cloud computing from an enterprise perspective. Procedia Technology, 12, pp.529-534.

Campbell, J., Goldfarb, A. and Tucker, C., 2015. Privacy regulation and market structure. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 24(1), pp.47-73.

Cortez, P. and Hay, D., 2014. Privacy Disclosure and Auditing: An Exploratory Study.

Google 2017 Google.co.in. N.p. Web. 21 Jan. 2017.

Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Hörisch, J., Freeman, R.E. and Schaltegger, S., 2014. Applying stakeholder theory in sustainability management: Links, similarities, dissimilarities, and a conceptual framework. Organization & Environment, 27(4), pp.328-346.

Mason, C. and Simmons, J., 2014. Embedding corporate social responsibility in corporate governance: A stakeholder systems approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 119(1), pp.77-86.

Nissenbaum, H., 2015. Respecting context to protect privacy: Why meaning matters. Science and engineering ethics, pp.1-22.

Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategic management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.     

Sinclair, J., 2016. Shift or Stasis| Advertising and Media in the Age of the Algorithm. International Journal of Communication, 10, p.14.

Young, D.R. and Kim, C., 2015. Can social enterprises remain sustainable and mission-focused? Applying resiliency theory. Social Enterprise Journal, 11(3), pp.233-259.