14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago, Google announced that it really wants to conquer China this time and it plans to do that by acquiring several companies which will support its expansion. But what's more interesting about this conquest is that Google also cooks some new technologies that might reveal a different side of the Mountain View company: the one interested in social-networking websites, a kind of services that was often avoided by Google. This time, Google aims to challenge the Internet giants in this market such as MySpace and FaceBook but there is no official statement that this new product might become available for the entire world.
According to paidContent.org, numerous publications on the Internet talked about this matter but IHT is the one which brought the information about a potential social network to be released in the upcoming months.
"The number of Chinese consumers searching for information on their cellphones may surpass those visiting Web sites on computers by 2009 and the shift could help Google catch up with Baidu, its rival, Google's president for China, Lee Kaifu, said in an interview Wednesday. The company also plans to start social-networking services in China similar to the popular MySpace Web site, owned by News Corp., or Facebook, Lee said. Google may form partnerships or buy local companies to reach that goal, he said," IHT wrote according to paidContent.org.
Obviously, all these moves are meant to challenge Baidu, the leader of the Chinese market that is often nicknamed the 'Chinese Google'. Since the Mountain View giant announced its intentions of expanding its products into the Chinese market, the local firms formed an alliance that rejected most of Google's attempts; thus, China is somehow a prohibited land for the big G. However, the latest Google efforts might cause some unexpected results for the Chinese rivals as the media tends to become more focused on the local version of Google.