Page 42 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Google has hired 100 engineers in China—more than in all the rest of
Asia—to improve its Mandarin-language search capabilities. One challenge is
finding easier ways for users to input Pinyin or Roman letters that signify
sounds in Mandarin. Another task Google has linguists working on is better
delineating words in Chinese characters that don’t clearly define white spaces.
“We hire the top tier of the top tier, and we can be sure that 100 percent of
our offers will be accepted on campus,” Lee says.
Lee tells me that Google’s global reach constitutes a huge advantage over
Baidu. “Nobody should be content
with only being able to read infor-
“We have a competitive product now, and we mation from one country. Chinese
are certain we will have a superior product in content comprises only 10 percent
the very near future.” of the worldwide Internet. I think

Kai-Fu Lee, every Chinese citizen should want
president, Google China to and demand that they have the
ability to access content created in
the United States, Europe, or
anywhere else in the rest of world.”
What about putting in more interactive community features such as the
online chats that Baidu benefits from? “It’s debatable if community-building
features are relevant to search,” he says.
Sniffs Baidu cofounder Xu, “Lee is a tech guru, but he is not a search
expert. It’s been proved that community features work best with Chinese
searches.” He adds, “Google has made more misjudgments in China than in
the rest of the world.” Tangos Chan, publisher of China Web 2.0 Review in
Beijing, agrees with Xu. “Google China did not think locally,” he says.
Indeed, Baidu is ahead of Google with several innovative local features.
Post Bar lets users type in a query and land on a message board to chat with
peers and get responses. Baidu Knows lets individuals share knowledge and
collect virtual points for giving the best answer. Baidu also offers searches
over mobile phones to find, for instance, the McDonald’s closest to the next
subway stop. Baidu began offering mobile search in March 2006, and it took
Google nearly a year to catch up. Baidu also offers multimedia searches,
including video clips, which Google does not offer yet.

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