I’d wish they spend more time and resources improving their greater china search results rather than spending resources doing localization facelifts.

Their search results are far less in coverage and accuracy compared to baidu.

Depuis ses premiers succès, Google a été l’initiateur de bien des révolutions. Il avait par exemple démontré qu’un site sobre et extremement simple à utiliser en permettait sa rapide adoption par les utilisateurs et ainsi accroitre s…

By the way, the translation version is very stupid.

there is nothing “simple” or “clean” about the typography or the UI in gmail or the new google docs. it’s just underdesigned chaos. it may get rave reviews from tech folks, but it is not good design. don’t confuse functional simplicity with formal simplicity, and for that matter, don’t separate form and function.

if you want to see the perfect counterpoint, look at leopard. apple does “simple” obscenely better than google, and for the world’s most sophisticated GUI operating system. that’s design.

this chinese version is no better than the u.s. version from that perspective. and i think it’s a laugh that a page full of chinese characters is considered “uncluttered” : )

The funny part – the wholesale theft of concepts and ideas is not as bad as AOL’s similar crimes in regards to Y!.

Yahoo.cn looks like google.com while google.cn’s beta design looks like yahoo.com. Somebody’s getting the localization wrong.

Brian, Americans had the same problem with Google back in the day as well. Eventually we all came to accept it.

Either simplicity is not universially appreicated, or Google is giving in too easily in foreign markets (which wouldn’t be the first time).

What more we want from Google!!!

i spoke with some colleagues here: the typical chinese internet user uses the internet when they have free time and hence prefer to browse.Therefore, a portal-like design that places comprehensivity over brevity (of content) fits the “explorer” mentality of many users. think back to how we used the internet in its earliest days, we used directories because we simply did not know what was out there on the web. same thing in china.

in china, the major portals like sina and sohu dominate the “browsing” user market. that does not mean intention-based users who use search engines are missing in CHina. they do, but their needs are best met by Baidu currently. a colleague of mine uses Baidu for chinese language searches because Baidu simply does it better than Google. google is used only for english language searches, a niche market in China.

I feel Google China is being realistic in its market strategy here. China’s web user market is still only above 10% of the overall population and growing really rapidly and acquiring new and clueless users all the time; hence chasing the newer and larger “browser” user type makes perfect sense compared to chasing the more sophisticated “searchers” who are still in the minority. Faced with a dominant competitor in search, like Baidu, competing on search technology (chinese lang) might not seem a wise choice. google might prefer to own that new user base first and slowly educate and convert them to search while buuilding brand awareness, compared to losing the browser market to Baidu when the users get savvy.

having a yahoo-like design is just called localization, not a symptom of an overall design change as implied by some comments above.

Look at it. They started out as novel search engine, they now want to become a phone company, and now they want to become a Yahoo. So what exactly is Google’s barriers to market entry? what monopoly do they posses?

If you can provide me withe a definite answer in favour of Google then you may have a case. However I see their stock heading south when the new beast and king of the universe step into the ring.

Look at it. They started out as novel search engine, they now want to become a phone company, and now they want to become a Yahoo. So what exactly is Google’s barriers to market entry? what monopoly do they posses?of boss of bosses.

If you can provide me withe a definite answer in favour of Google then you may have a case. However I see their stock heading south when the new beast and king of the universe step into the ring.