Adam Penenberg compares Wal-Mart to Google:
Key moment in company's history:� Wal-Mart: 1988, when it opened up its first Supercenter in Washington, Missouri, thereby giving new meaning to the term "one-stop shopping."
� Google: 2000, when, following Yahoo's lead, it began selling advertisements based on keywords, giving new emphasis to the term "relevancy."
In-house technology:
� Wal-Mart: Developed information technology (it operates the nation's largest private satellite communication system) and perfected the use of the bar code to speed up the supply chain so that both Wal-Mart and the vendor know exactly how many blenders, brooms and baseball gloves they have sold, and how many need to be delivered to specific stores.
� Google: Developed algorithms to rank web pages by link popularity so that searches are not only fast, but also yield the most useful results.
Posted by Kevin on April, 21 2005 at 06:04 AM
