Google’s Long Road To Number One In China

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Google is a company that’s used to being number one. In fact, they’re used to be so far in first place they don’t really have any competition. Therefore, the fact they haven’t been able to dominate the search market in China speaks of their need to try a new strategy. That new strategy involves hooking up with local partners who are already big in the country.

Google tentatively entered the Chinese market in mid-2005, and has since agreed a range of local ventures, including taking a stake in social networking site Tianya.cn and downloading service Xunlei Network Technology Co, and a partnership with major portal SINA Corp to build up traffic.

But the U.S. company has a long way to catch up on Baidu.

As it builds a local team, lack of management independence in China has slowed Google’s recruitment drive, said Rein, noting that the company’s co-founder Larry Page has to sign off every job offer.

The current score shows Baidu with 61.5% of Chinese search market share and Google has 22%. With time, Google hopes to reverse those numbers.

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