BEIJING — Google Inc., owner of the most popular search engine, is struggling to be a verb in China.
“G-O-O-G-L-E is not a normal Chinese spelling, and people don’t pronounce it right,” Kai-fu Lee, Google’s president for Greater China, said in a Nov. 30 interview in Beijing. “Most people call us ‘Go Go.’ ”
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb, has less than half of Inc.’s 61 percent market share in China. Lee, recruited from Microsoft Corp. in 2005 to expand Google in China, said he will try new advertising strategies to overcome the language barrier. He declined to provide more information.
“Very few people know Google and what they stand for” in China, said Charley Kan, managing director of Mediaedge:cia, a unit of WPP Group Plc, the world’s second-largest advertising company. “Compared to Baidu, it is in a weak position.”
