The Secret of Google's Success? Of course, there are really no "secrets." But here, in my opinion, are some of the reasons that Google has been so wildly successful.
The most important secret of Google’s success is that the people who founded and who work at Google are incredibly, incredibly smart.
Google is a research-focused company. The attitude is: build something nifty, and then we’ll figure out how to market it. This stands in marked contrast with most other companies, particularly those that have a direct relationship with users (consumers). It’s much more typical to think first about marketing, and only second whether something is a cool technology. With Google, the technology comes first. With most consumer companies, technology is used in support of product marketing.
Technology and research for the sake of technology and research is emphasized so much at Google that employees are allowed to spend some of their time on whatever interests them, whether or not there is any direct usefulness. Many of Google’s new products have come from this employee freedom. Google’s atmosphere is somewhat like that of a university computer science department, except that meals are catered and dental care and dry cleaning are provided on the premises.
Of course, a huge index of Web pages, and the hardware and software to quickly run queries against the index are important. So is a lean, elegant primary user interface, completely devoid of advertisements or other clutter. Results in Google cannot be purchased, and advertising, or sponsored links, in Google results are clearly marked as such. Integrity in not selling search result ranking is an important factor in Google success.
