Google Gives More Freedom to China Ops; MySpace Moves In
Google is planning to give its China operations more autonomy, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Google China is run very autonomously. We want to increase that ... China is growing very quickly ... so it's important that we invest in China," CEO Eric Schmidt said. Schmidt said that Lee Kai-Fu, Google China's current president, will not share that position with anyone else in the near future. Google China's former co-president, Johnny Chou, resigned in December, apparently because Google did not support his "localization plan." Google's plan to increase Google China's autonomy comes in the same week that Google won the right to sell advertising on 400 Web sites owned by China Telecom, helping it compete with Microsoft and the dominant local rival, Baidu.com, in the world's second-biggest Internet market. Baidu announced in its financial earnings yesterday that net profit surged 143 percent year over year in the first quarter. Also in China news: MySpace launched a beta of MySpace China today. Google is currently the sole provisor of contextual ads to MySpace. |
