Disrupt SF 2018
Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China at the Disrupt SF 2018 conference.
- The former president of Google China told the audience at a tech conference in San Francisco on Wednesday that if Google returned to China it will have a tough time succeeding.
- Kai-Fu Lee suggested that Google's managers were not tough enough to compete with the local "gladiators" that are Chinese entrepreneurs.
- Lee also said that Chinese consumers would be tough for Google to reach at a time when homegrown Chinese companies are faring well.
Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China, doesn't give his former company very good odds of success if it decides to re-enter the Chinese market.
Speaking to an audience at the Disrupt 2018 conference in San Francisco, Lee suggested that Google's current management doesn't have the right stuff to compete in China's growing and rough-and-tumble Internet markets.
"The heads of multinationals are really just professional managers," said Lee, who worked for Google from 2005 until 2009. "If they were to compete against local entrepreneurs who are gladiators in this Coliseum I don't think the American companies will have a high chance of succeeding."
Google managers last month confirmed that the company is considering a plan to once again operate a search application in China. In 2010, Google announced it had decided to pull out of China rather than adhere to the demands by the Chinese government to censor information. Apparently, managers have reconsidered their previous stance on censorship.
While most of the attention since then has been on whether a return to China is ethical, Lee focused his evaluation for a Google reboot in China on the company's chances of success.
He wasn't optimistic for multiple reasons.
"When I left, we had a much higher market share than when I joined," Lee told the crowd. "We went from 9 % to 24%. We were making progress. Their revenue was approaching billions. It was pretty good. But afterwards they made certain decisions to pull out. I understand their decisions but regarding their possible re-entry, I think re-entry is always difficult because either you're acknowledging what you did earlier was not right or you're not. And either way there's some trickiness to it."
'People aren't looking for another search engine or an app store'
At the time Google pulled out of China, the main competition was Baidu, which dominated, and continues to dominate the Chinese search engine market.
But Lee noted that the market in China has changed in several important ways since Google's 2010 departure, and Google's ability to appeal to Chinese consumers, and to attract Chinese employees, would be more difficult today.
"The bigger issue really is can an American multinationals succeed in China now that China has bifurcated into this parallel universe," Lee said. "The entire dynamics are different (since Google departed). People aren't looking for another search engine or an app store. New companies are emerging and addressing previously unknown customer needs. Innovations are coming out. The new grads generally prefer to work for Chinese companies."
Lee is now Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a $2 billion dual currency investment fund.
Eventually Lee softened his tone and said that Google had "as good a product as anybody" and that they had "a higher chance" of succeeding--presumably compared to other foreign companies. He signed off by wishing Google the best.
Google did not respond to requests for comment about Lee's comments.
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