Guge gone in China

[davidtemple]

China Tech Stories noted on September 27, 2006 that the Google’s logo on google.cn was the original and not the newly created one for Guge, Google China’s name. However the old Guge logo came back so many thought it was a fluke. No fluke, as of Oct 9 no more Guge. Google China took on the Chinese name Guge in April of 2006. Guge which meant “harvest song”, never caught on with Chinese internet users. What do you think?

[Quadrille]

Switching around will hardly help their brand-building; but it looks like they've finally made up their minds.

Weird how Google are so confident in most markets, but rarely put a foot right in China!

[davidtemple]

You're right Quadrille, Google it tops in many countries but can't get it right in China. I think they are trying too hard. They have Baidu, who is homegrown, to contend with and Yahoo which is run by Jack Ma so I think they don't have a good strategy even though they grabbed KaiFu Lee from Microsoft. I think they're lagging Yandex in Russian too.

[Quadrille]

Ah!

I'd forgotten the MS poaching case. Did that ever get settled? I remember MS were really upset at the time.

[davidtemple]

Yeah and Google's poached quite a few from MSN. I read that when Steve Ballmer heard about it he tossed a chair across the room. Here's a post I did last year.

"This global physical expansion by Google looks serious. Especially since this is another ex Microsoft exec. Do I see a pattern? Take talent away from Microsoft and place them around the world. Must be the 2005 version of Risk and Google seems to have the lead. Hey Steve, put that chair down!"

[Quadrille]

Nice one.

Not that I always get pleasure out of M$N's pain :rolleyes:

Just usually :cool: