Is Google dependent on other companies and/or partnerships?
Introductory
With the rise and popularity of Google's search engine, more and more companies tend to be willing to use Google' s AdSense. Google AdSense is the program that can give website holder advertising revenue from each page on their website. AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to their site (content). If we would turn the questionarry around and asking if companies would be dependent on AdSense, we would be surprised how many (small) companies are using it to gain revenue. The amounts diverse from being small to being huge
Partnerships
NASA
On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA and Google are planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers.
AOL
Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 Billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL. As part of the collaboration, Google plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium-video service within Google Video. This will allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase.
Sun Microsystems
Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org.[19]
Mozilla Foundation
Google also is involved in collaborative development efforts with the Mozilla Foundation, based on a recent job posting.[20] Google is looking for software engineers to join them in collaborative development on the Firefox browser. They also offer a download of Firefox with the Google Toolbar pre-installed.
Dependency on other companies
Hardware
Google doesn't invest in high-end hardware, rather they use the commodity box hardware that you can find in a typical desktop PC. In fact they don't even buy the fastest microprocessor, they buy the ones that gives the best "cost per query". Since Google does not have big expensive deals with other PC manufacturing companies, like IBM/Dell, it saves a lot of money. Well being cost-effective as well providing stable server for fast query access, they have found an ideal combination which overseas even the big multinationals that spend thousands of dollars on hardware equipment