Sinobytes

Google China chief quits, reasons unknown

Sep 6, 2009 21:11

Google Inc's China chief, Kai-Fu Lee, has resigned with--two days after his departure--no clear reason.

The 49-year-old Taiwan-born, US-educated executive had been with Google ever since its official launch in China in 2005. Much of that time was filled with controversy over the tech giants complying with Chinese Web-filtering regulations, which removed politically sensitive and negative material from its Google.cn search engine.

Googles woes in China didn't end there, with ongoing battles over content deemed unsuitable by the Chinese Government--be it pornographic search suggestions appearing on Google.cn (and since removed) or videos of ethnic violence posted on Google-owned YouTube--and a number of Google products have been blocked by state censors, with several still blocked right now.

This is leading to a lot of speculation that Mr Lee quit Google China in frustration at a number of his leading products being blocked by Beijing's nation-wide Web-filtering system, with all the loss of traffic, influence and revenue that entails; especially as Google is locked in a losing battle with Chinese search engine Baidu for user numbers.

It is only speculation, of course, but it's easy to see that a talented IT exec and computer science researcher such as Kai-Fu Lee would not be too pleased at having his products botched and his creative team thwarted by a Government ready and willing to hit the "off" switch on any inconvenient Web site or media outlet, with no recourse for their creators.

YouTube is totally blocked now in China, as well as all of Google's "blogspot" blogs, and Picasa Web Albums are totally borked, in that the pages are available, but all photos have vanished, and no uploading is currently possible. Furthermore, frequent connection resets occur when using any Google localization other than the "harmonized"--i.e. censored--Google.cn. Thus, users in China who attempt to search Google.com or Google.com Image search will find that Google frequently disappears off the interwebs, regardless of whether you're searching for "football results" or "corrupt officials".

Imagine a product meeting at Google, led by Mr Lee, which ran as follows:
--So... how many photos were uploaded to Picasa by users in mainland China yesterday?
--Ummm. None. It just got blocked.
--Oh. Crap. Is YouTube back on?
--Nope. That's... erm... still dead.
--Blogspot?
--Let me count. Ummm. Yes, some new blog posts on there from within China. Let's see... 1, 2, 3. Yes, three.
--Three?
--Yes, Mr Lee.
--I need more coffee.

Users in China who have access to a VPN, which redirects page requests via another country, may still access all blocked content in China, but those numbers are microscopically tiny. Indeed, many Chinese Netizens do not even realize that Web filtering occurs, and so if they encounter a "dead" Web page, they would just presume the site no longer exists, and move on. Those users attempting to access YouTube or Picasa Web Albums today will think the site is defunct, a goner.

Mr Lee is moving on to an "angel fund" which supports and injects capital into promising Web startups. On his Chinese blog (blog.sina.com.cn/kaifulee--Chinese language only) two days ago, he used a quote by Apple founder Steve Jobs exhorting people to "follow their hearts and intuition". If that doesn't entirely explain his motivation to leave Google China, Mr Lee is likely too discreet to explain further, especially since he is about to publish a new book in mainland China entitled Making a World of Difference: The Kai-Fu Lee Story.

So, best wishes from Sinobytes to Mr Lee as he "follows his heart" to work with startups and angel funds in China, a subject I'm keen to cover further on Sinobytes in the near future. A replacement as head of Google China has yet to be announced.

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