Why should Google stay out of China?

Because nobody in China has forgotten how Google shamefully blamed the Chinese government for its total failure to gain traction on the Chinese market against Baidu.

They totally lost the business battle and tried to max out their exit by bashing China big time. Like many other foreign companies operating in China, they couldn ‘t figure out the rules so blamed their own failure on “censorship”.

They were millions of Chinese users that loved Google and felt totally betrayed by this PR move [1 ] . You can not insult your users and think they will keep on coming back.

Yes China is a hard market and it takes time to understand Chinese consumers. The Brits started a war a century ago because they couldn ‘t sell their products in China.

How do you manage to understand enough of the local context so you can make Chinese customers use your product? If Google can not answer that question, they should not try to come back.

Footnotes

[1 ]Google.cn: R.I.P or good riddance?

This text was originally published in quora.