How Does Age Influence Linguistic Knowledge English Language Essay

How Does Age Influence Linguistic Knowledge English Language Essay From my experience in teaching English in a great number of mixed-age classes at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology foreign language center, I have received completely contrasting feedback from my students at the end of every course. By applying the same teaching method when I work with both young learners and adult learners, I discover a big gap in the result of their learning. In the pronunciation section, younger learners acquire successfully and effectively while older learners seem to fail in learning English sounds. From what I observe, most of young learners in my classroom have native-like pronunciation. In contrast, the complexity of English phonological system leads to adults failure in getting phonology accuracy when they have to fight with many non-existent sounds in their mother tongue. Unlike pronunciation, the success in learning vocabulary and grammar is in a reverse order. Adults find it easy to understand and use almost complicated vocabulary as well as gramm ar structures whereas young learners often make mistakes when learning new words and doing grammar exercises. Indeed, older learners feel at ease with most English grammar points while younger learners claim that vocabulary and grammar are beyond their reach. These differences lead me to the wonder whether or not there is a correlation between age and second language acquisition (SLA). Hence, my paper examines the role of age in SLA in terms of the rate and success of learners linguistic knowledge. From the explanation of the effect of age, I suggest some implications to help not only young learners but also older learners to acquire their language knowledge perfectly. SLA refers to the process of learning of individuals and groups who are learning a language subsequent to learning their first and that language (Saville-troike, 2006, p. 3). In learning a second language, a number of variables influence students actual acquisition including age, personality, motivation, learning style, group dynamics, aptitude, attitude to the teacher and course materials and so on. Among them, age the most frequently discussed factor has been paid much attention by many linguists. Countless studies and researches have recently been conducted on this topic in order to know how age affects second language acquisition It is a common belief that children are more successful L2 learners than adults. Meanwhile, many linguistic researchers argue that the older are better. However, the belief about SLA in different ages is actually equivocal. Saville-Troike (2006) explained this controversy in his study. Some studies define success as initial rate of learning where older learners have an advantage while other studies define it as ultimate achievement where learners who are introduced to the L2 in childhood indeed do appear to have an edge. Also, some studies define success in terms of how close the learners pronunciation is to a native speakers where children are superior to adults, others in terms of how closely a learner approximates native grammaticality judgments where older learners are better than younger learners (p. 82) In terms of the effect of age on the rate of SLA, according to Ekstrand (1976), Snow and Hoefnagel-Hà ¶hle (1978) and Snow (1983), in naturalistic situations, children normally have a slower rate of development in the target language and do not perform as well as older learners in the short term, but they quite often surpass older learners in the long run (as cited in Miralpeix, 2007, p. 62). Undoubtedly, younger learners are better at SLA in the long run while older learners are better at learning languages in the short run. Concerning grammar and glossary, Krashen, Long and Scarcellas research paper pointed out that adults proceed through early stages of syntactic and morphological development faster than children (p. 573). In comparison with younger learners, older learners have an initial advantage in the rate of SLA when they deal with a complicated system of syntax as well as morphology. Ellis (1985) supported advantages of older learners that when we take the rate into consideration, older learners are better then younger learners as they can reach higher proficiency levels if learners at various ages are matched according to the amount of time they are supposed to the target language (p. 105). However, other studies suggest that adults do not make progress as rapidly as children when acquiring pronunciation. According to Harmer (2007), children who learn a new language early have a facility with pronunciation which is denied by older learners (p. 81). Also, Cochrane (1980) gave a clear illustration to this belief. He investigated the ability of 54 Japanese children and 24 adults to discriminate /r/ and /l/. The average length of naturalistic exposure was calculated as 245 hours for the adults and 193 hours for the children (i.e. relatively little). The children outperformed the adults. (as cited in Ellis, 1994, p.486) In general, adults seem to be able to acquire grammar as well as lexis more quickly than children and vice versa in the field of pronunciation. Where success is concerned, it goes without saying that the longer the exposure to the L2, the more native-like L2 proficiency becomes (Ellis, 1985, p. 106). Actually, Ehrman and Oxford (1995) pointed out younger learners are more likely to attain fluency and native-like pronunciation, while older learners have an advantage in understanding the grammatical system and in bringing greater world knowledge to the language learning context (p. 68). Hence, it is likely that younger learners will pronounce in a more natural way than older learners. Most young individuals who begin their studies of the L2 at the early age do achieve native-like fluency. The earlier they start the more professional at pronunciation they become. Supporters of this belief claim that children are able to learn second language pronunciation easily, automatically, effortlessly and gain an indistinguishable frequency level from that of native speakers. As Ellis (1994) indicated, learners who start as children achie ve more native-like accent than those who start as adolescents and adults (p. 489). Oyama (1976) also supported the younger-is-better notion in her investigation of 60 male immigrants settling down in USA at various ages from 6 to 20. She found that the youngest arrivals performed in the same range as native-speakers control (as cited in Ellis, 1994, p. 489). Conversely, some adult learners may succeed in acquiring native levels of grammatical accuracy in full linguistic competence (Ellis, 1994, p. 492). When the success of second language lexical acquisition, younger learners do not perform as well as older learners in the short term (Muà ±oz, 2006, p. 90). Snow and Hoefnagel-Hà ¶hle (1978) conducted a research in the Netherlands with English learners of Dutch and then showed that adolescent and adult learners results in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test were better than those of the younger learners. (as cited in Muà ±oz, 2006, p. 90) We clearly see that there is a great difference in the rate and success of SLA between adult learners and young learners in the aforementioned empirical researches. Hence, the question Why do the contrasting results exist? is raised. When we know the causes we will know how to deal with the problems both younger and older learners encounter in SLA. A number of studies in the light of explaining the role of age in SLA point out that neurological, cognitive and affective factors account for this issue. Many longitudinal and cross-sectional researches assert that the ability to learn a foreign language is biologically linked to age. The biological factor is supported by the Critical Period Hypothesis which claims that learners past the age of puberty are in all probability unable to achieve native-like pronunciation in any case (Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 142). There is a time when language acquisition is easy and complete. However, beyond that time SLA is difficult and almost incomplete. If SLA takes place during that period, in all likelihood learners will achieve native-speaker ability. That is why Pujol (2008) divided the hypothesis into two versions. The strong version is that language must be learned by puberty or it will be never learned from subsequent exposure; the weak version is that after puberty language learning will be more difficult and incomplete (p. 13). Various studies about the critical period hypothesis suggest that younger learners are superior to older learners as they acquire a foreign language before the puberty. Penfield and Roberts (1959) study explained why it is easier to learn the target language within the first ten years of life. During this period the brain retains plasticity, but with the onset of the puberty this plasticity begins to disappear. We suggested that this was the result of the lateralization of the language function in the left hemisphere of the brain. That is, the neurological capacity for understanding and producing language, which initially involves both hemispheres of the brain, is slowly concentrated in the left hemisphere for most people (as cited in Ellis, 1985, p. 107). With regard to pronunciation acquisition, Seliger (1978) indicated that there are many critical periods for different aspects of language. The period during which a native accent is easily acquirable appears to end sooner than the period governing the acquisition of a native grammar (as cited in Ellis, 1994, p. 492). Actually, learners who begin studying L2 as adults are unlikely to have native-speaker competence in pronunciation. Not only neurolinguistic studies but also affective researches have been carried out to explain that children are better than adults. As Brown (1980b) proposed, SLA is related to stages of acculturation including initial excitement and euphoria, culture shock, culture stress and assimilation (as cited in Ellis, 1985, p. 109). The ability of learner to relate and respond easily to the foreign language culture strongly determines the success of SLA. Schumann came to conclusion that the learner will acquire the second language only to the degree that he acculturates (n.d., p. 29). Valdes (1986) offered a more persuasive account of the notion the younger, the better. A young child, because he has not built up years and years of cultural-bound view and view of himself, has fewer perspective filter to readjust, and therefore moves through stages of acculturation more quickly, and of course acquires languages more quickly. (as cited in Tallapessy, n.d., p. 16) At the early age, young learners have socio-cultural resilience as they are much less culture-bound than older learners. Thanks to their strong resiliency, children can overcome stages of acculturation quickly and then acquire the target language rapidly. In addition, as Ellis concluded, child learners are more strongly motivated to communicate with native speakers and to integrate culturally. Also, child learners are less conscious and therefore suffer less from anxiety about communicating in an L2 (1994, p. 494). They learn a foreign language because of the need to be accepted by the native community. That is why most of younger learners can successfully achieve native-like pronunciation as they are exposed to the first language environment. Besides the biological and emotional factors aforementioned, various cognitive abilities between younger learners and older learners lead to their differences in SLA. Leaver, Ehrman and Shekhtman (2005) defined cognition as thinking. There are many processes involved in thinking, and all of them are considered part of cognition. Some examples are noticing, paying attention, making guesses and hypotheses, monitoring what you say, interpreting what you read or hear, and so on (p. 38). Cognitive strategies enable the students thinking process to be unique. This uniqueness is called high level control i.e. consciousness. Ellis (1985) noted that older learners can learn about the language by consciously studying linguistic rules and apply these rules when they use the language whereas younger children consider language as a tool for expressing meaning (p. 108). According to Halliday (1973), the young child responds not so much to what language is as to what it does (as cited in Ellis, 198 5, p. 108). Additionally, Rosansky (1975) believed that L2 development can take place in two different ways. While the young child sees only similarities, lacks flexible thinking and is self-centered older learners are predisposed to recognize both common and different features about the language, to think flexibly and to become increasingly de-centered (as cited in Ellis, 1985, p. 108). Understandably, most social attitudes towards the use of a certain language in younger learners have not been developed, Furthermore, at the early age, children often lack meta-awareness, which results in their open cognition of a new language. Unlike children, older learners own a strong meta-awareness and hold social attitudes towards the target language. That is the reason why Ellis (1994) pointed out that adults possess more fully developed cognitive skills, which enable them to apply themselves studiedly to the task of learning a L2 (p. 493). Thus they will experience more negotiation of meanin g and better input by using general and inductive learning abilities. Actually, various studies and researches show that adults are better language learners because they have not only better cognitive skills but a better memory as well. Whenever they deal with syntax and morphology system they will memorize them quickly and easily. Moreover, many teachers commonly notice that adults have a longer concentration span than children. Children cannot concentrate on certain activities as long as adults. As Hermar explained, older learners do exhibit noticeable superiority because they tend to be more self-disciplined. (2007, p. 288) From the analysis of the strong correlation between age and SLA, I clearly realize that my teaching methodology should be various when I work with younger learners and older learners although I carry out the same lesson about pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary. With the same content, I should change my teaching way in order to suit students of different ages. On the basis of the theoretical framework, younger learners are more intelligible then older learners in the process of acquiring native-like pronunciation. The former are not strongly affected by old habits of their mother tongue whereas the latter find it difficult to form new habits of L2 because of the influence of the first language. Nevertheless, adults have higher awareness than children. As a result, when I teach pronunciation I usually use some kinds of explicit explanation to enable adults to use their critical thinking. For sound formation, I use a sketch of mouth to describe the pronunciation of sound in terms of lips, tongue, teeth, etc. For example, when I teach the target sound /ÃŽÂ ¸/, I will show the following picture and give the description. In order to pronounce it, you should put your tongue between your teeth. Then blow out air between your tongue and your top teeth. Explicit explanation will be followed by demonstration, imitation and practice. (Baker, 2003,p. 133) Moreover, older learners feel at ease with distinguishing two similar sounds thanks to their problem-solving talent. That is why I consider minimal pairs as a powerful tool to draw their attention to differences among some English sounds. Lets take the vowel /I/ as an example. Firstly, I ask them to say the sound /i:/ by opening the mouth a little and lengthening it. Then open the mouth a little more to make the sound /I/. Contrasting two seemingly similar sounds will help adults produce the sounds more accurately. (Baker, 2003,p. 6) On the contrary, when I teach children pronunciation, I overuse imitation and repetition with a model video clip of English sounds. As you know, children are quick at imitating a certain sound even when the sound does not exist in their mother tongue. As a result, I often use clips from the program English have a go in which a native speaker Professor Say It will pronounce the target sound slowly enough for young children to imitate. Because the lecturer in the clip has a good sense of humor to add fun to pronunciation, I find it useful especially when I work with younger learners. As I know both children and adults suffer a lot from such boring pronunciation lessons, I always think of some games to arouse students interest and let for them relax during the lesson. They will not have a feeling of suffering from language learning. Who is a poet? is a common game in my teaching pronunciation. I ask my students (intermediate level) to make a poem with the last word containing the target sound. I will begin with the sentence Jim has a wife (the diphthong /ai/ is the objective of my lesson). Then my students make a poem like this. Jim has a wife She is very nice She is only 25 She has big eyes They have a happy life But Jim suddenly died Then she ends her life They never say goodbye Wish them happy life In the paradise In regard to teaching grammar, three very most important sources of interest for children in the classroom are pictures, stories and games to enhance young learners intrinsic motivation (Ur, 1996, p. 288). Hence, when teaching my younger learners I use a great number of pictures to contribute towards their interest in learning process. As a result of childrens low cognitive capability, I conduct mechanical drills, gap-fills, and sentence transformations to familiarize them with the structure and help them have the confidence to use it in a controlled environment. These tasks can be made into games through which they can get enjoyment, fun and pleasure. For instance, I ask my young children (Lets go) to recognize verbs of past tense in terms of regular ones and irregular ones by marking them with different colors as children are keen on coloring very much. Firstly, I set the rule regular verbs = green, irregular verbs = blue. Secondly, I divide the class first into teams and then show them sentences one by one. In the end, the group which can get the most correct answers is the winner. Conversely, so as to make adults learn structures thoroughly and produce correctly, I use a sequence of activities from accuracy-oriented exercises in the beginning to fluency tasks for the free use of the grammar in a certain context in the end. As Ur (1996) suggested, there are seven types of grammar practice like awareness, controlled drills, meaningful drills, guided, meaning practice, free sentence composition, discourse composition and free discourse (p. 84). These kinds of activities focus mainly on both form and meaning practice with the aim of promoting adults cognitive skill and self-discipline. In terms of vocabulary, I consider visual aids a useful artifact to convey the meaning of the new word when I teach younger learners vocabulary items. I put a lot of efforts in preparing the pictures as well as concrete objects for my young children to learn effectively as what we hear, we forget; what we see, we remember. In contrast, older learners are provided with concise explanations, detailed descriptions, antonyms, synonyms, hyponyms or co-hyponyms whenever they study vocabulary items. Another difference in my vocabulary teaching between children and adults is that I draw the formers attention to the form, meaning, spelling and grammar of a new word while I further introduce the latter the denotation, connotation and appropriateness of a vocabulary item. In short, we can clearly see that age differences have a strong influence on SLA between younger learners and older learners. While children who start to learn a language at the early age have a facility with the pronunciation while adults possess high cognitive abilities which help them benefit from abstract language teaching approaches. We can jump to conclusion that an early start to foreign language learning is likely to lead to better long-term results. Start as early as you can. Furthermore, the age of students is a major factor in our decision about what and how to teach. Students of different ages will have different advantages and learning styles in acquiring L2 linguistic knowledge. As teachers, we should know their strength and weakness to guide them study more efficiently and effectively. Thanks to this paper, I know I should adjust my teaching approach in a way more flexible and appropriate to students of various ages, thus I can be a better language instructor. In this way, I should ensure that my materials and tasks are age-appropriate so that all individuals can learn best regardless of being young and old.

Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation Essay

These include search, cloud computing, software, and online advertising technologies. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 16 percent of its shares. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was â€Å"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful†, and its unofficial slogan was â€Å"Don’t be evil†. In 2006 Google moved to headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond Google’s core search engine. It offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking . Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and instant messaging. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the browser-only Chrome OS for a netbook known as a Chromebook. Google has moved increasingly into communications hardware: it partners with major electronics manufacturers in production of its high-end Nexus devices and acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012. In 2012, a fiber-optic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband service. The corporation has been estimated to run more than one million servers in data centers around the world and to process over one billion search requests and about 24 petabytes of user-generated data each day. In December 2012 Alexa listed google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger. Its market dominance has led to criticism over issues including copyright, censorship, and privacy. History Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a  better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank; it determined a website’s relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site. A small search engine called â€Å"RankDex† from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking. The technology in RankDex would be patented and used later when Li founded Baidu in China. Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine â€Å"BackRub†, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word â€Å"googol†, the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. Originally, Google ran under Stanford University’s website, with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend’s . In January 2013, Google announced it had earned $50 billion in annual revenue for the year of 2012. This marked the first time the company had reached this feat, topping their 2011 total of $38 billion. Financing and initial public offering The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. Early in 1999, while graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much time and distracting their academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer and later criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excite’s venture capitalists, after he negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced, with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. The vast majority  of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place. There were concerns that Google’s IPO would lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires. As a reply to this concern, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the company’s culture. In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. In an effort to maintain the company’s unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on: a flat organization with a collaborative environment. Google has also faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees. The stock performed well after the IPO, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007, primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market. The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds. The next year, against Page and Brin’s initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company’s pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court; Google agreed to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. In 2001, Google received a patent for its PageRank mechanism. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. The Googleplex interiors were designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. Three  years later, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million. By that time, the name â€Å"Google† had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb â€Å"google† to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as â€Å"to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.† 2013 onward Google announced the launch of a new company called Calico on September 19, 2013, which will be led by Apple chairman Arthur Levinson. In the official public statement, Page explained that the â€Å"health and wellbeing† company will focus on â€Å"the challenge of ageing and associated diseases†. As of September 2013, Google operates 70 offices in more than 40 countries. Google celebrated its 15-year anniversary on September 27, 2013, although it has used other dates for its official birthday. The reason for the choice of September 27 remains unclear, and a dispute with rival search engine Yahoo! Search in 2005 has been suggested as the cause. The Alliance for Affordable Internet was launched in October 2013 and Google is part of the coalition of public and private organisations that also includes Facebook, Intel and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission’s worldwide target of 5% of monthly income. The corporation’s consolidated revenue for the third quarter of 2013 is reported in mid-October 2013 as US$14.89 billion, a 12 percent increase compared to the previous quarter. Google’s Internet business was responsible for US$10.8 billion of this total, with an increase in the number of users’ clicks on advertisements. Acquisitions and partnerships Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, primarily small venture capital-funded firms. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc. The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a three-dimensional view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Google acquired Urchin Software in April 2005, using their ‘Urchin on Demand’ product to create Google Analytics in 2006. In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube  for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006. Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube’s running costs, and YouTube’s revenues in 2007 were noted as â€Å"not material† in a regulatory filing. In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales. On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies. Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million. The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million. Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million, and commented on its internal blog, â€Å"we’re looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it†. In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux. In addition to the many companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for research, advertising, and other activities. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to build of offices. The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other’s technologies. The company also partnered with AOL to enhance each other’s video search services. Google’s 2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson. Google would later launch â€Å"AdSense for Mobile†, taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. Increasing its advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corporation entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on the then-popular social networking site MySpace. In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, displacing former sponsor AOL. NORAD Tracks Santa purports to follow Santa Claus’ progress on Christmas Eve, using Google Earth to â€Å"track Santa† in 3-D for the first time. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel. In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing  Google with high-resolution imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008. Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazine’s photographs. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine. The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status. In 2010, Google Energy made its first investment in a renewable energy project, putting $38.8 million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a twenty-percent stake in the project to get funding for its development. In February 2010, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC granted Google an authorization to buy and sell energy at market rates. The order specifically states that Google Energy—a subsidiary of Google—holds the rights â€Å"for the sale of energy, capacity, and ancillary services at market-based rates†, but acknowledges that neither Google Energy nor its affiliates â€Å"own or control any generation or transmission† facilities. The corporation exercised this authorization in September 2013 when it announced that it will purchase all of the electricity produced by the not-yet-built 240-megawatt Happy Hereford wind farm. Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway-based company that provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services. This acquisition enabled Google to add telephone-style services to its list of products. On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob. This occurred days after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase. Google acquired the company for an undisclosed amount. In July 2010, Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years. On April 4, 2011, The Globe and Mail reported that Google bid $900 million for six thousand Nortel Networks patents. On August 15, 2011, Google made its largest-ever acquisition to-date when announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion subject to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe. In a post on Google’s blog, Google Chief Executive and co-founder Larry Page revealed that the acquisition was a  strategic move to strengthen Google’s patent portfolio. The company’s Android operating system has come under fire in an industry-wide patent battle, as Apple and Microsoft have sued Android device makers such as HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. The merger was completed on the May 22, 2012, after the approval of People’s Republic of China. This purchase was made in part to help Google gain Motorola’s considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies to help protect it in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies, mainly Apple and Microsoft After the acquisition closed, Google began to restructure the Motorola business to fit Google’s strategy. On August 13, 2012, Google announced plans to layoff 4000 Motorola Mobility employees. On December 10, 2012, Google sold the manufacturing operations of Motorola Mobility to Flextronics for $75 million. As a part of the agreement, Flextronics will manufacture undisclosed Android and other mobile devices. On December 19, 2012, Google sold the Motorola Home business division of Motorola Mobility to Arris Group for $2.35 billion in a cash-and-stock transaction. As a part of this deal, Google acquired a 15.7% stake in Arris Group valued at $300 million. On June 5, 2012, Google announced it acquired Quickoffice, a company widely known for their mobile productivity suite for both iOS and Android. Google plans to integrate Quickoffice’s technology into its own product suite. On February 6, 2013, Google announced it had acquired Channel Intelligence for $125 million. Channel Intelligence, a technology company that helps customers buy products online, is active globally in 31 different countries and works with over 850 retailers. Google will use this technology to enhance its e-commerce business. The official confirmation of Google’s acquisition of the Israel-based startup Waze occurred in June 2013. Waze is promoted as a â€Å"community-based traffic and navigation app†. Following the acquisition of Waze, Google submitted a â€Å"10-Q† filing with the Securities Exchange Commission that revealed that the corporation spent US$1.3 billion on acquisitions during the first half of 2013. The filing also revealed that the Waze acquisition cost Google US$966 million, instead of the US$1.1 billion figure that was initially presented in media sources. The 2012 acquisition of WIMM Labs, a company that previously made an Android-powered smartwatch, was confirmed in August 2013. As of August 31, 2013, Google has not publicly commented on the news concerning WIMM Labs. The acquisition of  Flutter, a creator of hand gesture recognition technology, was confirmed by the corporation in early October 2013. The reported price is US$40 million and Google spokesperson stated: â€Å"We’re really impressed by the Flutter team’s ability to design new technology based on cutting-edge research.† Flutter’s technology allows users to enact hand gestures to control navigation for apps such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Winamp. Google data centers As of 2011, Google Inc. owned and operated six data centers across the U.S., plus one in Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011, the company announced plans to build three data centers at a cost of more than $200 million in Asia and purchased the land for them. Google said they will be operational within two years. Products and services Advertising For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues. In 2011, 96% of Google’s revenue was derived from its advertising programs. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them. Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google’s AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. In February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship’s sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorialpolicy at the time, stating â€Å"Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations.† The policy was later changed. In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized because of antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008. In an attempt to advertise its own products, Google launched a website called Demo Slam, developed to demonstrate technology demos of Google Products. Search engine According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%. Google indexes billions of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire through the use of keywords and operators. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google’s indexing, claiming that Google’s caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content. In this case, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google. The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has compiled a list of words that the web giant’s new instant search feature will not search. Google Watch has criticized Google’s PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites. The site has also alleged that there are connections between Google and the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. Google also hosts Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into its new book search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in a New York City federal court against Google in 2005 over this service. Google replied that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. Google eventually reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Canada. Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking it to remove the works of La Martinià ¨re from its database. In competition with Amazon.com, Google sells digital versions  of new books. On July 21, 2010, in response to Bing, Google updated its image search to display a streaming sequence of thumbnails that enlarge when pointed at. Though web searches still appear in a batch per page format, on July 23, 2010, dictionary definitions for certain English words began appearing above the linked results for web searches. The â€Å"Hummingbird† update to the Google search engine was announced in September 2013. The update was introduced over the month prior to the announcement and allows users ask the search engine a question in natural language rather than entering keywords into the search box. Productivity tools Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004, The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, at which time it had 146 million users monthly. The service was the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage. It was also the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum. The service offers over 15 GB of free storage, shared with other Google Apps, with additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB available for per 1 GB per year. Gmail uses AJAX, a programming technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser. Steve Ballmer, Liz Figueroa, Mark Rasch, and the editors of Google Watch have criticised the privacy of Gmail, but Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. In 2004, Google started opensource software project hosting, called Google Code, which allows developers to download incomplete programs at no charge. Google Docs, another part of Google’s productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate on documents in an online environment, similar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, and was released as an invitation-only preview. On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an experimental spreadsheet editing program, which was combined with Google Docs on October 10. Enterprise products Google Search Appliance was launched in February 2002, targeted toward providing search technology for larger organizations. Google Apps allows  organizations to bring Google’s web application offerings, such as Gmail and Google Docs, into their own domains. The service is available in several editions: a basic free edition, Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Education, and Google Apps for Government. In the same year Google Apps was launched, Google acquired Postini and proceeded to integrate the company’s security technologies into Google Apps under the name Google Postini Services. Other products Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program â€Å"learns† from professionally translated documents, specifically UN and European Parliament proceedings. Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites. In March 2005, Agence France Presse sued Google for copyright infringement in federal court in the District of Columbia, a case which Google settled for an undisclosed amount in a pact that included a license of the full text of AFP articles for use on Google News. In 2006, Google made a bid to offer free wireless broadband access throughout the city of San Francisco along with Internet service provider EarthLink. Large telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon opposed the efforts, claiming it was â€Å"unfair competition† and that cities would be violating their commitments to offer local monopolies to these companies. In his testimony before Congress on network neutrality in 2006, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf blamed the tactics on the fact that nearly half of all consumers lack choice in broadband providers. Google currently offers free wi-fi access in its hometown of Mountain View, California. In 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project with plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities. On March 30, 2011, Google announced that Kansas City, Kansas would be the first community where the new network would be deployed. In July 2012, Google completed the construction of a fiber-optic broadband internet network infrastructure in Kansas City, and after building an infrastructure, Google announced pricing for Google Fiber. The service will offer three options including a free broadband internet option, a 1Gbit/s internet option for $70 per month, and a version that  includes television service for $120 per month. The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license. Google provides a software development kit for developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phones. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based phone. On January 5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One. A report in July 2013 stated that Google’s share of the global smartphone market, led by Samsung products, was 64% in March 2013. Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web browser, and a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27, 2009. The company described Google Wave as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. The service is Google’s â€Å"email redesigned†, with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio, video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google Wave was initially in a developer’s preview, where interested users had to be invited to test the service, but was released to the general public on May 19, 2010, at Google’s I/O keynote. On September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open source web browser, which was then released on September 2, 2008. On July 7, 2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open source Linux-based operating system that includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account. Google Goggles is a mobile application available on Android and iOS used for image recognition and non-text-based search. In addition to scanning QR codes, the app can recognize historic landmarks, import business cards, and solve Sudoku puzzles. While Goggles could originally identify people as well, Google has limited that functionality as a privacy protection. In 2011, Google announced Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments. In late June 2011, Google soft-launched a social networking service called Google+. On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in this â€Å"limited† trial phase. After four weeks in operation, it reached 25 million users. At a launch event on July 24, 2013 in San Francisco, U.S., a newer version of the Nexus 7 Google tablet device was released to the public, alongside the  Chromecast dongle that allows users to stream YouTube and Netflix videos via smartphones. In 2013 Google launched Google Shopping Express, a delivery service initially available only in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Moto X  Speaking at the D11 conference in Palos Verdes, U.S. in late May 2013, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, a former Google employee, announced that a new mobile device will be built by his company, which is wholly owned by Google, at a 500,000 square-feet facility in Texas, U.S. formerly used by the Nokia company. The facility will employ 2,000 people by August 2013 and the new phone, named the â€Å"Moto X†, will be available to the public in October 2013. The Moto X features Google Now software, and an array of sensors and two microprocessors that will mean that users can â€Å"interact with in very different ways than you can with other devices,† in the words of Woodside. Media reports suggest that the phone will be able to activate functions preemptively based on an â€Å"awareness† of what the user is doing at any given moment. Corporate affairs and culture On Fortune magazine’s list of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012 and fourth in 2009 and 2010. Google was also nominated in 2010 to be the world’s most attractive employer to graduating students in the Universum Communications talent attraction index. Google’s corporate philosophy includes principles such as â€Å"you can make money without doing evil,† â€Å"you can be serious without a suit,† and â€Å"work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun.† Employees After the company’s IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google. Before 2004, Schmidt made $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each received an annual salary of $150,000. In 2007 and early 2008, several top executives left Google. In October 2007, former chief financial officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer. In March 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, then vice-president of global online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officer  of Facebook. At the same time, Ash ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops. On April 4, 2011, Larry Page became CEO and Eric Schmidt became Executive Chairman of Google. In July 2012, Google’s first female employee, Marissa Mayer, left Google to become Yahoo!’s CEO. As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Google’s newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience until July 2012, showed that half of all new product launches at the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off. Googleplex  Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, is referred to as â€Å"the Googleplex†, a play on words on the number googolplex and the headquarters itself being a complex of buildings. The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, table football, a baby grand piano, a billiard table, and ping pong. In addition to the recreation room, there are snack rooms stocked with various foods and drinks, with special emphasis placed on nutrition. Free food is available to employees 24/7, with paid vending machines prorated favoring nutritional value. In 2006, Google moved into of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The office was specially designed and built for Google and houses its largest advertising sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships. As of February 2012, a significant engineering team is based in New York City, and has been responsible for more than 100 engineering projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets. As of September 2013, Google’s East Coast office is located at 76 Ninth Ave, New York City, New York. In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, focusing on shopping-related advertisement coding and smartphone applications and  programs. By late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Other office locations in the U.S. include Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York City; San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; Reston, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Furthermore, Google has several international offices. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels to provide up to 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus’ energy needs. The system will be the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The idea of trimming lawns using goats originated from R. J. Widlar, an engineer who worked for National Semiconductor. Google has faced accusations in Harper’s Magazine of being an â€Å"energy glutton†. The company was accused of employing its â€Å"Don’t be evil† motto and its public energy-saving campaigns to cover up or make up for the massive amounts of energy its servers require. Easter eggs and April Fools’ Day jokes Google has a tradition of creating April Fools’ Day jokes. On April 1, 2000, Google MentalPlex allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet. Also in 2007, Google’s Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, allowing users to have email messages printed and shipped to them. In 2008, Google announced Gmail Custom time where users could change the time that the email was sent. In 2010, Google changed its company name to Topeka in honor of Topeka, Kansas, whose mayor changed the city’s name to Google for a short amount of time in an attempt to sway Google’s decision in its new Google Fiber Project. In 2011, Google announced Gmail Motion, an interactive way of controlling Gmail and the computer with body movements via the user’s webcam. Google’s services contain easter eggs, such as the Swedish Chef’s â€Å"Bork bork bork,† Pig Latin, â€Å"Hacker† or leetspeak, Elmer Fudd, Pirate, and Klingon as language selections for its search engine. The search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the  Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. When searching the word â€Å"recursion†, the spell-checker’s result for the properly spelled word is exactly the same word, creating a recursive link. When searching for the word â€Å"anagram,† meaning a rearrangement of letters from one word to form other valid words, Google’s suggestion feature displays â€Å"Did you mean: nag a ram?† In Google Maps, searching for directions between places separated by large bodies of water, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo, results in instructions to â€Å"kayak across the Pacific Ocean.† During FIFA World Cup 2010, search queries including â€Å"World Cup† and â€Å"FIFA† caused the â€Å"Goooo†¦gle† page indicator at the bottom of every result page to read â€Å"Goooo†¦al!† instead. Philanthropy In 2004, Google formed the not-for-profit philanthropic Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion. The mission of the organization is to create awareness about climate change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon. Google hired Larry Brilliant as the program’s executive director in 2004, and the current director is Megan Smith. In 2008 Google announced its â€Å"project 10100† which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then allowed Google users to vote on their favorites. After two years of silence, during which many wondered what had happened to the program, Google revealed the winners of the project, giving a total of ten million dollars to various ideas ranging from non-profit organizations that promote education to a website that intends to make all legal documents public and online. In 2011, Google donated 1 million euros to International Mathematical Olympiad to support the next five annual International Mathematical Olympiads . On July 2012, Google launched a â€Å"Legalize Love† campaign in support of gay rights. Tax avoidance   Google uses various tax avoidance strategies. Out of the five largest American technology companies it pays the lowest taxes to the countries of origin of its revenues. The company accomplishes this partly by licensing technology through subsidiaries in Ireland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands. This has reportedly sparked a French investigation into Google’s transfer pricing practices. Following criticism of the amount of  corporate taxes that Google paid in the United Kingdom, Chairman Eric Schmidt said, â€Å"It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic.† During the same December 2012 interview Schmidt â€Å"confirmed that the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer.† In 2013, Schmidt responded to questions about taxes paid in the UK by pointing to the advertising fees Google charged UK companies as a source of economic growth. Google Vice president Matt Brittin testified to the Public Accounts Committee of the UK house of commons that his UK sales team made no sales and hence owed no sales taxes to the UK. Environment Since 2007, Google has aimed for carbon neutrality in regard to its operations. In June 2013, the Washington Post reported that Google had donated US$50,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. In July 2013, it was reported that Google had hosted a fundraising event for Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who has called climate change a â€Å"hoax†. See also Comparison of web search engines Criticism of Google Don’t Be Evil Google Google Balloon Internet Google Catalogs Google China Google Chrome Experiments Google logo Google platform Google Ventures – venture capital fund Google X Google+ Googlebot – web crawler Googlization List of Google domains List of mergers and acquisitions by Google Ungoogleable References External links not add links –> at the Internet Archive at Hoover’s Bibliography: Wikipedia

Organizational Level Outputs

Organizational Level Outputs Outputs Diagnosis Executive Summary The Purpose for this summary is to provide you with the findings of my analysis on Skype’s organizational outputs covering the Organizational, Group and the Individual level. Skype is a new Microsoft Division, which provides low cost fee calls to landlines and mobile phone not registered within Skype, using the Peer to Peer technology and its latest version (5. 10. 0. 15) which has the capability to support nearly any computer operating system including mobile device with the ability to connect to the internet, giving the user the ability to make free Skype-to-Skype calls, Video, Instant Messaging. Skype’s customers can be broken down into three main groups: Freemium service users, Low cost users, and the Business category, currently with over 40 million concurrent users online, (Malik, O. 9 May 2012).With over 800 employees which consist of: Product Development, Sales and Marketing, Site Operations, Custo mer Support, with most of the development team at its headquarters in Luxemburg and 44% of the overall employees situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia additionally Microsoft announce in mid April 2012 their intention to add 400 new employees which will spread across five major cities starting with London, and Stockholm along with Palo Alto Prague and Tallinn.David Nadler’s and Michael Tushman’s congruence Model, explains that organizations are made up of groups and individuals each, responsible for his/her own for outputs in support the overall organization’s strategy, (Nadler,D. A. & Tushman, M. L. 1980). Thus, this model will be useful in my evaluation of how Skype’s outputs at each level interact with each other, while providing you with my determination of the level of congruence among the same. Organizational Level Outputs Skype’s provides low cost fee calls to landlines and mobile phone not registered within Skype, using the Peer to Peer tec hnology and its latest ersion (5. 10. 0. 115) which has the capability to support nearly any computer operating system including mobile device with the ability to connect to the internet, giving the user the ability to make free Skype-to-Skype calls, Video, Instant Messaging world-wide, which includes individual and business groups, additionally, Skype sells its own products which include: Microphones, headsets, WiFi Phones to name a few. While Skype’s Mission remains unchanged, and maintains it goal to continue to increase the number of users, revenue and profitability and includes four Objectives: 1.Continue to grow the connected and paying user base. 2. Increase the usage of the free and paid products and to extend the relationship between Skype and its users. 3. Develop new monetization models, to include advertizing. 4. Broaden user base to include more business users. Meeting the Goals The figure shows how Skype is meeting the intended goals through the number of indivi dual users as well as business entities which vary from small to medium and the way it has been reaching new customers via the embedded application in appliances such as television sets and other mobile devices.Thus at first glance it appears Skype is meeting the intended goals by reaching the two groups globally. Group Level outputs Skype’s organizational structure is much defined as it differentiates each department: Product Development has consistently stayed up to date with technology and in some cases ahead of the competition since the introduction of video calling, which gained high penetration on handheld devices including personal computers and other electronic devices, while continuing to develop products for business customers.Allowing for Sales and marketing to diversify revenue through subscriptions premium accounts including advertising, which through the first six months in 2010 Skype earned $13. 1 million on $406. 2 million of sales representing 25% year over y ear revenue growth. (Frommer, D. Aug 2010). Site Operations, this team performs routine functions and solutions, these are the employees who ensure people have the roadmap in how Skype operates, as well as planning future operations working along with the development teams handling system interruptions.Kaili Kleemer Skype’s Site Operations Manager includes in the interview her desire to take Skype to the next level which is to move from away from manual software and hardware deployment. â€Å"We don't want to be the people who push a button manually and restart the server to fix problems. Instead, we have been moving everything we can to automated systems more closely integrated with the applications our product engineering teams develop. We've been pushing for a move towards Development Operations (DevOps) and working more closely with those teams at the application level. (Skype, June 2012). Customer Support, is Skype’s weakest link yet, reports of dissatisfied cust omers that extend as far back as 2005 and as current as of 17 Aug, 2012. Figure2. Shows Skype’s ranking at 535 out of 553 companies that have a Customer Service Scoreboard. com rating, which depicts Skype’s customer service as terrible, while the list of dissatisfaction goes on and on, by now you would have thought Skype could dedicate real people to provide this service and not the automated response, which is better than no response at all.Key Individual Functions Individual Skills and Knowledge vary from position and departments for example, software engineering who is assigned to the development department is charged with managing and leading a team of software engineers of greater than six people, improving and developing team processes and engineering practices while working closely with product mangers which drive and implement product strategy. Thus the desired output is explicitly upfront in the job description.Individual performance is sort of unique, specifi cally for those who are geographically dislocated from the supervisors and is set on goals and reachable outcomes agreed upon by the subordinate and supervisor. (Gonzalez, R; Koizumi,D; Kusiak, K. May 2011). Outputs Congruence Overall the congruence between the three levels, based on my analysis is low and that is because only two of the levels have some form of interaction, at the organizational level and the group level.While the individual level doesn’t seem to have as much interaction as it should, Naddler’s concept of congruence requires consistency or fit between each pair of organizational inputs. (Nadler,D. A. & Tushman, M. L. 1980). Therefore to produce an output that meets the overall organizational strategy all groups must fit. In the case of Skype in which the customer service dissatisfaction indicates the individual group is not consistent with the others, in fact there is no clear definition as to who or what department handles such customer grievances.On the other hand when one looks at the individual functions, the job description does fit into Skype’s goals and objectives. However, it appears, when it gets to the actual execution, it is not followed through. Conclusion the Congruence model provides a way for organization to establish processes which allow departments to show that when working as a unit they results can be effective and provides the organization a better way to manage all groups or departments without leaving one behind, as in my opinion is the case with Skype.Reference Caukin, J. (June, 2012). Day in the Life of a Skype Operations Manager. Accessed, 7 Aug, 2012. From: http://blogs. skype. com/en/2012/06/day_in_the_life_of_a_skype_sit. html CustomerServiceScoreboard. (Aug, 2012). Skype Customer Service. Accessed 18 Aug, 2012. From: http://www. customerservicescoreboard. com/Skype Frommer, D (Aug 2010). Chart of the Day: Skype is a real, Live Growth Company. Accessed 9 Aug, 2012. From: http://www. businessin sider. om/chart-of-the-day-skype-is-a-real-live-growth-company-2010-8 Gonzalez, R; Koizumi,D; Kusiak, K. (May 2011). eHRM and its Outcomes: A Study of Relational e-HRM in Multinational Companies. Retrieved 18 Aug 2012. From: http://www. scribd. com/doc/76891246/60/E-performance-Appraisal Malik, O (9 May 2012) Skype’s present is secure, its future is not. Retrieved (16 July 2012) from: http://gigaom. com/2012/05/29/skypes-present-is-secure-its-future-is-not/? utm_source%3Dsocial%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter%26utm_campaign%3Dgigaom Nadler, D. A.

Youth Suicide Is Influenced By Depression - 2500 Words

Introduction This year for the thesis time of the month, themes were American Social Concerns. There were many topics but the one chosen, youth suicide. This stood out mainly because it was something that sparked. This was very beneficial because, if looking at the title name and getting many thoughts and questions then this would be a great thesis topic. The question that stood out was, â€Å"What influences youth suicide?† As figured, being extolled at the amount of credible information received,inspired this thesis. From all of my gathered information, which was a lot might I add, a final conclusion was made, youth suicide is influenced by depression, abuse, and/or stress. Depression Youth suicide, the deliberate act of killing oneself, is usually between the ages of 15-24. Based on research, youth suicide is the third leading cause of death. To me, this was not surprising and it also inspired my question. The third leading cause of death must have influences, right? Influences on youth suicide 6 Depression means, in this case, a mental state of altered mood characterized by feelings of sadness, despair, and discouragement. Depression plays a huge part in youth suicide considering it’s the number one cause for suicide today. There are many different causes for depression including biology, gender, age, genetics, health conditions, trauma /grief, changes and stressful events, and even medications and substances. For those who are curious, there are waysShow MoreRelatedYouths with Depression1040 Words   |  5 PagesDepression is a psychological disorder that not only gravely affects the state of mind of a person but also the physical body. It is characterised by behavioural changes such as differing intensities of sadness, feelings of hopelessness, low self-worth and loss of interests (â€Å"A Definition of Depression†, 2007, para. 1). Depression is a major problem among youths and the number of occurrences has been growing in recent years. Kuabara, Van Voorhees, Gollan and Alexander (2007) support this claim byRead MoreMajor Depressive Disorder1739 Words   |  7 PagesMajor Depressive Disorder and Societies Youth Lisa Somerville Argosy University- Nashville Campus December 13, 2007 Abstract In an attempt to better understand depression in today’s youth, I have chosen to explore the depths of Major Depressive Disorder and how it affects the young people in our society. Depression amongst school age children and adolescents are the primary focus. The prevalence, adversities, and treatment of the depression are discussed as well. After exploring theseRead Moreâ€Å"Dying Before Their Time: The Startling Trends in Adolescent Suicide†1217 Words   |  5 PagesAmerican Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), suicide is the third leading cause of death for adolescents aged 15-24 years old. This calculates to 33,000 adolescents killing themselves each year (CDC, 2010). 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The internet has created online communities that can be used as support, and communities that can be misusedRead More Adolescence: Stress, Depression, and Suicide Essay1309 Words   |  6 Pagesmany conflicting opinions are raised about weather such a stage of childhood is influenced by stress, depression, and suicide rate. Some people support the optimistic view that says that adolescence is not a period of storm and stress. Others, including me, support an opposite pessimistic view which characterizes ad olescence as a period of stress and inner turmoil. Unfortunately, it has been recently proved that depression is a growing problem in todays society and a major contributing factor for aRead MoreAdolescence Essay 101357 Words   |  6 Pagesmany conflicting opinions are raised about weather such a stage of childhood is influenced by stress, depression, and suicide rate. Some people support the optimistic view that says that adolescence is not a period of storm and stress. Others, including me, support an opposite pessimistic view which characterizes adolescence as a period of stress and inner turmoil. Unfortunately, it has been recently proved that depression is a growing problem in today s society and a major contributing factor forRead MoreIncreasing Violence in Youth Culture Essay1093 Words   |  5 PagesIncreasing Violence in Youth Culture In Bradbury’s dystopian classic, Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse says â€Å" ‘I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other’ † (Bradbury 27). Bradbury claims through Fahrenheit 451 that our society is becoming increasingly violent in youth’s culture. Furthermore, common sense seems to dictate that as technology advances violence, increases as well. Although schools are considered to be the safest places for children, media, behavioral problems, and influences insideRead MoreTeen Suicide Essay891 Words   |  4 Pagesanother man without Clementi’s knowledge, Clementi committed suicide. The actual definition of suicide is â€Å"the action of killing oneself intentionally†. The act of suicide is a serious matter, and is particularly prevalent among teens and young adults. The best way to prevent teen suicide is through informing people of its existence, and educating them on the warning signs and prevention methods. In this ess ay I will explain why suicide is a major public health problem through statistics, show theRead MoreThe Main Environmental And Emotional Causes And Crisis Intervention Of Teen Suicide Essay1643 Words   |  7 PagesThis paper will discuss the main environmental and emotional causes and crisis intervention of teen suicide based on experimental facts and assessment studies. In today’s society, suicide rates continue to rise amongst teens. In some suicide cases, family and friends are caught completely off guard as signs can be misinterpreted. Why does suicide come as a surprise to family and friends and what can be done to decrease the record high will be one of the points within this paper. Early recognitionRead MoreQuestioning The Disorderly1484 Words   |  6 PagesQuestioning the Disorderly Each year, 5000 LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) youth end their lives because they don’t have the acceptance they deserve. The LGBTQ+ community faces more discrimination, such as hate crimes, bullying and unnecessary judgement, than the average straight or cis-gender person, making it more difficult to cope with mental illness and achieve the American Dream. The American Dream is slightly tainted for those in the LGBTQ+ community, and suffering