The Google Way

Communities Serving the Company

Leveraging the power of online communities as a marketing resource is nothing new, and many technology companies have been doing this for years. But Google was the first to recognize the full importance of these virtual communities and to analyze the many ways it could employ them to further its own growth.

Like Microsoft, Apple, and others, Google gives away application programming interfaces (APIs) that help users develop mini-applications to complement Google tools. Most of these mini-applications are just gadgets used to personalize the home page, the toolbar, or the desktop. But developers can use these APIs to extend Google gadgets, like Google Maps, building mashups that combine data from different sources ...