Google Chinese New Year

[twist]

After skipping many American holidays which they used to show, I see google is promoting the chinese new year. I am not against the Chinese New Year in anyway or google promoting them, just the fact that a US based company now skips local holidays while promoting foreign ones.

[vincevincevince]

Whilst I can understand your disappointment that Google has missed some USA holidays, Chinese New Year is celebrated throughout many countries of the world. I was in the local supermarket a couple of days ago and saw throngs of ethnically local people buying Black Bean Sauce and Crispy Pancakes ready for Sunday (I'm in the UK living in a 99% white european rural neigbourhood). It's a nice chance to have something a bit different!

[giggle]

Chinese New Year is celebrated A LOT here in Thailand. Lots of Thai people of Chinese descent. They had my kids creating Chinese lanterns in school today as part of the celebration. Gong See Fat Choi.

[Raymond]

Haha, which goes to show how important a market China is to Google.

[twist]

I think the part that bugs me the most is that, if i'm not mistaken, google has .uk, .ru, and so on. Seems like they would have no problem showing specific holiday logos for each individual country. Yet in US they not only choose to not show our holidays (if that isn't bad enough), now they are making sure we are aware of holidays that we don't even celebrate. Is it just part of the "kiss-ass/we'll do anything for money inclduding evil" campaign they have going with China?

[lawman]

Foo is supposed to be a happy fun place. Let's go back to that place. :)

[lgn1]

Lets hope for sales, it's not the year of the dog :)

[morron]

Yeh! Happy New Year! Chinses Or Not.

[Sarah Atkinson]

What local holidays have they missed?

[Syzygy]

Here are a few celebrations that perhaps should be, er... celebrated...

National What Week? [naturenet.net]

International Bog Day gets my vote...

;-)

Syzygy

[redstorm]

´º½Ú¿ìÀÖ(Happy Spring festival), Twist!
i think the reason maybe that visitors from China take a large share even for google english, Google promotes Chinese new year to increase the interactive between the SE and visitors. Maybe you don't know, Spring festival equals to Christmas day in China.

[twist]

I do not specifically remember the holidays they recently skipped. The only reason I noticed is because they had used them in the past and I was dissapointed when they didn't appear. One might have been Easter, [google.com...] since it hasn't been shown since 2001. Just curious why a billion dollar company has time to create logos for Chinese New Year and the Lunar New Year but can't afford to create a simple egg and bunny.

I did a general search on the net and found one website discussing this. Apparently google hasn't been creating Veteran Day logos. When questioned they replied that they only want light-hearted themes and Veterans Day was a serious theme. This would have been a great excuse except for the fact that they had a logo to celebrate the UK equivalant of Veterens Day. The website is full of images to show this but has political discussion so I doubt I would be able to link to it from here.

[vincevincevince]

redstorm:
When you say,

Maybe you don't know, Spring festival equals to Christmas day in China

you certainly risk offending a large proportion of Christians. Nothing but a celebration of the birth of Christ can be equal to Christmas, anywhere.

[LifeinAsia]

redstorm:
When you say,

Maybe you don't know, Spring festival equals to Christmas day in China

you certainly risk offending a large proportion of Christians. Nothing but a celebration of the birth of Christ can be equal to Christmas, anywhere.

I think redstorm meant in terms of the precentage of local people celebrating it, affect on the local economy, the way local commerce shuts down, the huge amount of people travelling to their hometowns, etc.