“Google: The World’s First Information Utility?” was featured in the Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE) journal earlier this year. The paper was coauthored by Professor Kenneth L. Kraemer, Rex Chen and Prakul Sharma.

In only ten years, Google has achieved remarkable success from online search-based advertising. Its search engine is dominant, and its IT infrastructure is the most powerful computing system in the world running on over one million com­puters and serving more than one billion users globally. Google makes money by using its search engine to deliver online advertising alongside responses to user searches for information, goods, maps, directions, and a host of other services. Its capabilities make it likely to become the world’s first information utility – a concept similar to electric utilities that provide services to many corporations and individuals alike. Constant innova­tion is the key to Google’s success and offers lessons for other companies: hire talented people, have them work in small teams, and give them freedom to excel, but use a rigorous data-based approach to evaluating results and making course adjustments.

A copy of their paper can be found here.