	According to Glassdoor.com, Google is one of the best companies to work for.  Google earned a rating of 4.4/5, followed by Microsoft with 3.8/5, and Yahoo! with 3.5/5. The reason for this is that people had fewer negative things to say about Google. The main complaint for Google is that the interviews are hard.  Both Microsoft and Yahoo! respondents had a negative outlook of the future for their respective companies and also mentioned they had poor senior management.  Yahoo! respondents also stated that they had poor middle management as well.

	Google is very good at diversifying its products. It has acquired over 170 companies since its founding, the most recognizable being YouTube and Motorola.  The purchase of Motorola allows Google to make its phone, the Nexus, without outsourcing the production. The Nexus uses the Android operating system, which Google bought in 2005 and then improved upon.
	Google’s main weakness is that it cannot customize its advertisements as well as social media sites, namely Facebook. This is because far more personal information is shared on and can be gathered by Facebook than is possible based on Google search terms.  For example, someone may search “how to get rid of a cold” on Google’s search engine; whereas on Facebook, they may post “ I hope I can get rid of this cold before my vacation to Florida.” as their status to get information from the user. Clearly, the latter contains more information, which in turn helps tailor advertisements to each individual and drives the price of the ad space up since the consumer is more likely to view advertisements that are relevant to them..

According to Google’s career page, Google uses three interviews to find the right applicants, which are having a conversation with a recruiter, a phone interview, and a face-to-face interview at Google’s office. During the entire interviewing process, applicants will talk with four or five interviewers. The interviewers might be any active member who works at Google. After completing three interviews, another independent committee at Google will collect feedback from all the interviewers to make the final decision. The reason they use active employees as interviewers is because they believe that “hiring good people and involving them intensively in the hiring process” will get them more good people. According to Business Insider, Google is one of the most selective companies for its applicants. There are over 3 million applications each year, but there are only about 7,000 people, or around 0.2% of the applicants was hired.

According to Google’s career site, Google is looking for long-term employees. There are four things that Google is looking for on its applicants, which are “Leadership,” “Role-Related Knowledge,” “How you think,” and “Googleness.” For leadership, they are looking for someone who can motivate a team. For example, someone who can carry out the team projects without being officially appointed as the team leader. For “Role-Related Knowledge,” they are looking for people who have a “variety of strengths and passions,” not only the skill sets, but someone who has different working experiences and backgrounds, plus the basic skills. For “How you Think,” they are looking for someone with good problem solving skills, especially having a clear logic behind the problems rather than just struggling for the right answers. This is saying that they value the processes more than the results. For “Googleness,” they want to know more details about the applicants, such as what is special about them and what makes them stand out. Interviewers want to make sure that Google is the right place for its applicants to grow, so they will look for their “bias to actions,” “comfort with ambiguity,” and “collaborative nature” to see if the applicants are suitable for working at Google.
