Buzz Technologies (BZTG): some more info http://www.chinaherald...

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retirementsoon

Re: retirementsoon post# 4975

Thursday, 05/10/2007 7:55:28 AM

Thursday, May 10, 2007 7:55:28 AM

some more info

http://www.chinaherald.net/2006/09/googles-china-problem-wto-columnwhen.html

.............................Meanwhile since last year Google started to invest in China and in March I attended a Google-party during a search engine conference in Nanjing. It made me a bit upset since in stead of the expected Chinese food, they only offered peanuts and cheap beer. That was a sign they had no clue how to adopted to the local situation. It was also otherwise very hard not to leave with the idea that something was very wrong there. US-Google managers formed islands of loneliness in the party, while outside in the hotel lobby intensive networking was going on. Most of the Google-people I met were freshly hired managers who often had a long track-record in other IT-companies in China. Since it was a party, everybody acted happy. But those seasoned had to swap their business suits for Google t-shirts and play ball games and work out.
Rumors suggest that those people have now stopped playing ballgames and are leaving Google China, because they think it is a sinking ship. Although there has not yet been a good explanation for the sudden drop in market share, there seems to be a pattern.
Earlier other US-based internet companies like Ebay and Yahoo dramatically underperformed in China. In those cases increased domestic competition was one reason. Another was that the American management just did not want to get they had to play in China a fully different ballgame.
"Even for American standards, those companies are a bit weird," told me a US newspaper executive last week. She had visited the US IT-companies regularly in an effort to learn from them.and found herself in a playground of youngster "who are still a bit wet behind the ears". She had one explanation: "It is simply American arrogance".

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