Google Swot Analysis

Strengths

*Google is king of search-related advertising, and search-related ads are the fastest growing sector of the online ad business, which is growing at 41% annually, said Piper Jaffray.

*Google has almost twice as many search ad clickthroughs as runner-up Yahoo. In December, Google had 16.5 trillion ad clickthrough, compared with Yahoo's 9 trillion, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

*Google earned $3.64 billion from U.S. online ad revenues in 2005, representing 69% of all paid search advertising, according to eMarketer.

*Google's market cap, now hovering at around $132 billion, is bigger than IBM and Chevron.

*Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Raschtchy said the stock would likely soar past $600 this year.

*Unlike high-flying Internet bubble companies of the 1990s, Google is profitable, with revenues growing an average 110% quarterly since it went public in August 2004.

*Google has a war chest of $7.6 billion for doing whatever it pleases.

*Google is one of the top 10 Web brands in the U.S., and the second-fastest-growing Web site, building traffic 29% in the past year, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Only Apple's Web site is more popular; Yahoo and MSN lag far behind.

Weakness

*Too dependant on search based advertising.99 percent of its revenues come from search-related advertising. The remaining 1 percent comes from sales of its enterprise search appliance.

*Lack of focus: Spreading too thin

*Stymied by its own success: Whether they like it or not, they are a media company," said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner. "What they provide is very valuable aspects of media, all wrapped up in search. But they're missing the internal talent and internal capability to think like a media company. Everything is from a technology perspective, and that is a real shortcoming."

Opportunities

*Display advertising

*Radio advertising

Threat