Google officially launched its free music site in China where any Chinese user can download free Chinese music from Chinese artists signed by Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music. This noted as an actual effort considering that Baidu offered free music that for awhile has hurt Google’s search market share:

Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said one reason Google lagged in the mainland search market was because it did not offer music downloads, the missing piece to its strategy in a market where it trails leader Baidu.com.

“We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads,” Lee told reporters. “We were missing one piece … we didn’t have music.”

Not surprisingly, this is limited to only China and if you want to get your fair share of music that is being unfairly regionally blocked, then there are only two things hindering you:

1. Learn Chinese
2. Use a proxy that is based in China

If you can do those two things, then enjoy downloading free music.

Now the legal question: If music is available for free in China, then can the music industry here in the United States actually still claim you are costing them money?

The stronger the rule of law becomes in China, the more cases such as Gooogle’s become the norm. A Chinese company, Beijing Guge Science and Technology Co., sued Google China for using the same Chinese name, Guge (谷歌).

A year ago, the Chinese courts dismissed the case against Google China as Google had registered the name seven days prior to Beijing Guge. More startling was that Google actually responded with a counter-suit and today won 100,000 yuan compensation from the previous lawsuit and ironically forced Beijing Guge to change their own name!

This was a major mistake in their ability to research or a corrupt attempt to forcibly change a foreign company’s name that really came back to bite Beijing Guge. Either way, this is a just another example to show that companies can safely do business in China even when the Chinese government does not like the industry very well.

In any case, would it be too over-the-top to say that Beijing Guge should have used Google for their research on trademark registration dates?

In what is a yearly tradition now, the major search engines have released their top ten lists of searches, with some interesting ones coming from Google China. Now, keep in mind that the list below are from more educated and English-speaking China searchers (not counting the fact that most Chinese people use Baidu), but nonetheless provide some insight into China’s net generation.

From Sina Tech, the top ten fastest growing searches:

1. 陈冠希
2. 奥运会开幕式
3. 四川地震
4. 不合格奶粉名单
5. 艳照门
6. 画皮
7. 赤裸特工f.b.i.
8. 国足欢迎你
9. 刘翔退赛
10. 神七

The one I personally like the most is the humorous spoof on the “Beijing Welcomes You (北京欢迎你)” Youtube video shown below:

The Wall Street Journal’s China Journal also has some of the hottest new vocabulary for those who have a real interest in the current/modern net culture of China:

New vocabulary

1. Shanzhai: Originally referred to the mountain strongholds of bandits. Now, the term refers to all manner of knock-off, substandard or improvised goods, such as these makeshift vehicles.
2. 囧 : This is an ancient Chinese character, pronounced jiong, used to mean “light shining through a window” several thousand years ago (kind of what the character itself looks like), among other things. Recently it has found a new life among Chinese youth as an emoticon to express a bad mood, since it also looks like a face crying out in a pictographic version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
3. Very yellow, very violent: The year’s first Internet catchphrase came from a CCTV interview with a 13-year-old girl, part of a program on the government’s new regulations on Internet censorship. Netizens who believed the girl had been coached by CCTV into making the statement lashed out against her, launching a human flesh search engine and numerous parodies.
4. Psoas Muscle: Another musical spoof regarding the Chinese soccer, this one aimed at the women’s team. It comes from one theory about the poor showing of the Chinese team: that it was due to the players’ relatively weak lower back muscles.
5. Three push-ups: Another Internet catchphrase, this one derived from an unconvincing alibi used in the death of a high school student.
6. 槑: This character, pronounced mei, is actually a variant of the word for plum blossom. But it also happens to look like a double version of the character 呆 (dai), which means silly or stupid. Hence 槑 now means “very silly or very stupid.”
7. Getting some soy sauce: Another catchphrase that originated with a man on the street’s don’t-bother-me response to an intrusive reporter.
8. Pick-up artist subculture: Men who see themselves as modern-day Don Juans, seducing women who are often married, sometimes targeting them for their money.
9. Phoenix man: Refers to a man who grew up poor and in the countryside, but thanks to their efforts and the support of others, is able to move to a big city and become successful. Phoenix men often hope to marry city girls but often encounter problems resulting from their different cultural backgrounds and habits.
10. Don’t Be Too CNN: This phrase emerged as a viral response to foreign media coverage of the protests in Tibet, interpreted by many Chinese as biased and inaccurate. A variant of the existing phrase “don’t be too CCTV,” which meant something more along the lines of “don’t be so serious.”

Google China has finally launched its localization initiative in China against Baidu by launching its own mp3 music search and mimicking Baidu’s successful mp3 search, first found through Music 2.0 and later noted through Search Engine Land. Music 2.0 has the basic scoop:

[T]he much talked about Google MP3 Search service is here at www.google.cn/music [a]nd it’s certainly game on as they take on Baidu’s very illegal mp3 search with legal links from its search results provided by local music service Top 100.cn for free streaming, free mp3 downloads and lyrics supported by advertising revenue, and paid Caller RingBack Tones (CRBT) via China Mobile - with rights being cleared by most major labels (with probably one major holdout), publishers and a number of domestic labels for mainly Chinese music[.]

However, Music 2.0 notes that Jay Chow songs had yet to be allowed for download believing that no deal had been established yet, but when looking at it now, there are in fact many Jay Chow （周杰伦) songs able to be downloaded (下载), so likely Google rolled it out before it had searched for those songs:

What has really ticked me off was the fact that Google China decided to side itself with the hated regional restrictions that many DVD player makers on computers like to restrict–if you live anywhere outside of China, you get the following note:

抱歉，谷歌不在您所在的地区提供您所需要的服务。

[loosely translated: Sorry, you are not in the correct area for Google (mp3 search) to service you.]

Ironically, it is also showing this to Google’s own bot making the page very non-SEO friendly:

Now, you can always just check your IP, learn about IP proxies, and get a China open proxy (transparent), to avoid this Internet censorship, but you would still have to search (and understand) Chinese to find music you want.

So, Google once again enters in very late, does some evil, but at least is doing something to compete through localization, even if it it has to copy Baidu:

So, what does Google China’s mp3 search offer?

• Very basic level of music trends (Baidu’s is far superior offering multiple trends on one nice page)

• Ability to download songs without DRMs for the first time

• The words from the song so you can sing along (always useful)

• Streaming, but be prepared to accept the ever-so-fun EULA:

If you are ever in doubt of the competitiveness of Baidu against Google, note that Bloomberg.com has information on the growing profits of Baidu:

China’s most-used Internet search engine, posted an 87 percent jump in second- quarter profit, beating analysts’ estimates and sending the shares up 13 percent.

The hidden gem from the article though is the fact that Baidu’s search market share continues to grow despite the international heavy weight of Google:

Baidu’s share of the Chinese Internet search market rose to 64.4 percent in the second quarter from 58 percent a year earlier, according to research firm Analysys International. Google’s share rose to 26.1 percent from 23 percent while Yahoo! Inc.’s fell to 5.5 percent from 11.6 percent, the Beijing-based researcher said.

They recommended buying stock, go figure.

Here’s something to think about, China’s TLD (.cn) is boasts the largest number of TLDs and is one of the top spam TLDs as well.

Multilingual Search has the top TLD by numbers details:

For a number of years, Germany (.de) was the world’s most popular ccTLD in terms of registrations.

But about two years ago China made its ccTLD a lot more affordable and easier to get. Since then, the country has been registering roughly 20,000 country codes a day. The country went from 2 million registrations to 10 million registrations in an amazing 12 months.

Within the past two months, China overtook Germany for the top spot, with approximately 11.4 million registrations. It’s safe to say that Germany isn’t going to take that lead back.

John Andrews includes info on the top spam TLDs:

A security firm is releasing a report stating .hk, .cn, and .info domains are the most “dangerous” when it comes to threats of malware. Whether you like McAfee or not, search engines like Google and Yahoo and MSN are very likely to incoporate this “trust” factor into their operations, if they haven’t already done that. We know Google doesn’t like .info as much as .com, and this new “evidence” appears to confirm whatever rationale Google might give for that. I fully expect Google to have more data available on the topic than McAfee anyway.

Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way.

A simple math reveals that China has about 1.35 million spam domains on .cn (we could say that China has even more if you want to be technical and note that Hong Kong is a part of China, but let’s focus on just .cn domains here).

So, here’s the dilemma for trying to rank in China:

• Want to rank well on search engines in China (Google)? Don’t get a .cn domain to avoid spam penalty.
• Want to rank well on search engines in China (by Chinese government)? Get a .cn domain to avoid government penalty.

Solution:

• Get a .中国 (zhongguo) domain. Oh, you expected this to be available now?

As I’ve noted a couple times about Google China copying Baidu in trying to surpass Baidu to become market leader within five years with dubious efforts in really understanding the Chinese market, Redline China (Pearl Research) conducted a study seeing how aware the Chinese people are about Google:

Based on interviews with the Chinese youth demographic, Google continues to struggle with lower user awareness, compared to Chinese search engine Baidu. These findings are contained in consulting firm Pearl Research’s new report “Baidu vs. Google: A Study of Search Engine Preferences among Chinese Youth.” A sample of the report can be found here: http://www.redlinechina.com/main/images2/SAMPLE_PearlResearch_Baidu_versus_Google_analysis_0801.pdf

It looks like Google continues to struggle in the wrong areas–yes, it is working hard to be better than Baidu (and in many areas it already is), but what Google still seems to not understand is the belief that a foreign company cannot do as well as a domestic one.

Key findings of the report: - Google is thought of as a foreign service which is not as suitable for Chinese searches Our interviews indicate that many Chinese youth chose to use Baidu over Google because they believe Baidu is a domestic product and thus should be better at indexing Chinese content.

When you see results like this, that means its time to start advertising within China to fight the perception through all marketing channels, even in channels that Google has previously forsaken (eg: TV advertising). Look, no matter how much better Betamax was over VHS, VHS understood the market was there in taping the full length of football games rather than having to put in two Betamax’s.

Sometimes superior products or services lose out to a competitor that can capitalize on what consumers actually want. Until Google understand this, it will always be second to Baidu.

Google has some aspirations to be a market leader in China within the next five years:

His plans to achieving that goal is not exactly clear; he did say Google will focus more on social and mobile features in China. Lee is still seeking social networking and mobile partnerships and acquisitions to help gain share. Lee told us this back in October, saying a redesigned Google China is necessary, and mobile is the way Google must go.

Google lost its best chance over two years ago when it moved its operations into Shanghai while still having a site predominantly in English. Now, with the Chinese government behind the scenes pushing for Baidu, which still has a far larger share, I do not see this as being a very likely situation as Baidu knows its market far better along with the ability to ignore international pressure on copyright issues.

Google China is being sued by Beijing Guge Sci-Tech for supposedly infringing on the firm’s name:

Beijing Guge Sci-Tech alleges that Google has infringed on the firm’s name. According to the court documents, the name “Guge” was officially registered in April 2006 by Beijing Guge Sci-Tech and Google didn’t register the name until November of 2007. Google’s response is that reports on the Internet showed that it intended to use the name “Guge” at the time it was registered by the Chinese company.

Beijing Guge Sci-Tech wants Google to change its Chinese name and to pay legal costs although no sum was mentioned in the court documents. The name “Guge” is not a real word in Chinese but a transliteration.The characters mean “valley song”.

I don’t quite know the exact laws for company names within China, but in the US at least, as long as the two companies are not competing within the same areas, then there’s no issue usually with having the same name (to a point of course). As for registering the domain name, well, first come first serve in the US once again. Still would be funny to see what Google China would rename itself as:

Guge wants Google to change it, and unless the courts side with Google for political/money reasons (and they certainly could), Google may need to rename itself.

A suggestion: How about 大数, the Chinese translation of the word “googol”?

Seriously, would be more fun to figure out what would be better names for 谷歌.

• 骨骼 - bones, skeleton (eh, not funny)
• 古哥 - ancient older brother (probably not the way to promote their brand)
• 辜哥 - guilty / criminal older brother (fits for the situation possibly)
• 顾蛤 - attending to clams (I dunno, seemed an odd combination)
• 钴铬 - cobalt cadmium (yeah Periodic Table!)

Feel free to suggest other ones!