Google China's 2008 roadmap

[bill]

Kai-Fu Lee sets out Google China's 2008 roadmap [china.org.cn]

"For Google China, 2008 is going to be the year of popularization," Kai-Fu Lee, president of Google Greater China, told China Business News last week.

Li recalled that Google China was created in 2005, began recruitment in 2006, and spent 2007 on product localization. Google renews its strategy every twelve months and the roadmap for 2008 will concentrate on the popularization of its products.

With regard to Google China's recent development and the battle with Baidu, Mr. Lee said that Google had concentrated on improving search engine quality last year. Surveys indicate that Google's Chinese search engine is the best on the market, but users cannot always see the difference.

If Google claims its search is now better than Baidu's then that would be quite a change. My personal tests with Chinese users a few years ago showed quite a gap with Google on the losing end.

One point that only gets a short mention is Google's desire to open up the non-Chinese internet to the Chinese speaking masses. They're going to do this with machine translation. My experiences with machine translation over the years with Japanese and Chinese has left a bad image. There have been improvements over the years, but it's still a painful experience to use.

[redstorm]

With regard to Google China's recent development and the battle with Baidu, Mr. Lee said that Google had concentrated on improving search engine quality last year.

TOP issue for Guge is: popularization, popularization and popularization. The Gap between Baidu and Guge is widing, instead of narrowing.
Second Issue maybe: How can Guge popularizd in China?

[bill]

What do you think about the quality of the SERPs between Baidu and Google? If you were doing a blind test for your keywords which brings back the most relevant results?

[redstorm]

Hi, Bill:
Your question reminds me: my search hobby changed from the former using Google China and Baidu equally to the current Baidu Dominates the Search.
Your guy may think it's the more relevant search result of Baidu that made the Change. But there are many characters behind the scene:
1. The Search Engine has stepped into the Community Period. In another world, the search engine is turning itself communitized.
Baidu met the trend by creating Baidu Tieba (post) and Baidu Zhidao (Know-hows). Both of these programs provide essential help to the user and generate large traffic in return. These Programs widen the Gap between the two SE as well and made Guge a secondary option for me.
2. As a Made-in-China Search Engine, Baidu has much inborn advantages, it doesn't need time to make itself localized; While it's a Have To issue to Guge. These factors attribute Baidu a simple interface, light burden, Fast Response to the market need and etc.
I can see Guge is improving, but I must admit it is a little slow than Baidu. That¡¯s a common problem that many large sized corporations met in China, I assume.