This week’s Search Celebrity Sighting is of Razorfish Senior Search Account Manager Joe DeVita. Joe was only mistaken for a search celebrity, but he’s a bigshot in our book, and by going all the way to China to get caught on camera witnessing the biggest search story of 2010 so far, he’s earned a place in the SEM Hall of Fame. Here’s Joe’s first-person account of what it’s like to be Big in Beijing.
I was in China last week to meet with Google’s China COO, Yuri Narciss. I met with Yuri the day Google.cn was redirected to Google.com.hk. It was a top news story in China. When my cab pulled up to Google’s Beijing office, 30 reporters rushed over to take my picture. One guy held my cab’s door shut with his foot so he could get a shot of me in the car. The papers ran stories about “unidentified foreign visitors” — that was me. The TV news showed me walking out of Google’s office that night (0:40).
Yuri and I planned to talk about Chinese consumer behavior and Google’s Chinese position, but the news of the day was more interesting. Yuri explained that nothing will change for Google’s China staff as long as the government doesn’t block google.com.hk. That’s the big uncertainty bomb, still ticking. The office will stay open since most of the staff are working on research and development. They have other products like email, music and shopping that are gaining traction.
Google users in China seem to be loyal like Apple users here. The loyalists I spoke to said they won’t stop using Google just because they are being routed through the Hong Kong site.
While meeting with Razorfish teams in Beijing and Shanghai, we evaluated the Google Hong Kong experience. Google.com.hk results used to be in traditional Chinese characters. On March 23rd the site was updated so users from the mainland could see results in simplified characters. Google figured that one out fast! I was curious about irrelevant results when searching for local information, but everyone agreed the experience with Google.com.hk was fine.
In the short term, it’s not likely Google will lose much share in China unless the Hong Kong site is blocked. Our Google and Baidu search campaigns targeting the mainland looked steady for the first week after March 23.
I was in China last week and met with Google’s China COO, Yuri Narciss. I met with Yuri the day Google.cn was redirected to Google.com.hk. This was a big news story in China. When my cab pulled into their Beijing office, 30 reporters rushed over to take my picture. It was intense. One guy held my cab’s door shut with his foot, so he could get a picture. The Associated Press ran a story about “unidentified foreign visitors”, that was me. Lots of Chinese TV news showed me walking out of their office that night.
Yuri and I planned to talk about Chinese consumer behavior and Google’s Chinese position, but the news of the day was more interesting. Yuri explained that nothing will change for their China staff as long as the government doesn’t block google.com.hk. That is the big uncertainty bomb that’s still ticking. The office will stay open since most of the staff are working on research and development. They have other products like email, music and shopping that are gaining traction.
Google users in China seem to be loyal like Apple users. The loyalists I spoke with will not stop using Google just because they are being routed through the Hong Kong site.
While meeting with Razorfish teams in Beijing and Shanghai, we evaluated the Google Hong Kong experience. Google.com.hk results used to be in traditional Chinese characters only. On March 23rd the site was updated so users from the mainland could see results in simplified characters. Google figured that one out fast! I was curious about irrelevant results when searching for local information, but everyone agreed the experience with Google.com.hk was fine.
In the short term, it’s not likely Google will lose much share in China unless the Hong Kong site is blocked. Our Google and Baidu search campaigns targeting the mainland looked steady for the first week after March 23.
Tags: Beijing, Google, Google.cn, Google.com.hk, Razorfish China
July 19th, 2011 at 10:40 am
It’s hard to find knowledgeable people on this topic, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks