Google Loses Top Adman In China
Google on Friday said its top sales executive, Johnny Chou, was resigning, indicating a possible change in direction for the Internet search company.
The departure of Chou, which had been rumored for several weeks, came amid a strengthening of leadership by Baidu.com in the Chinese search engine market and heated competition from new players, including Yahoo China and Tencent.
Chou, head of regional sales and business development and co-head of Google China alongside Li Kai-Fu, joined Google slightly more than a year ago. He previously spent nine years as president of China operations at UTStarcom. He will leave Google by the end of this month to pursue what the company called “a new career path.”
A similar reshuffling seems to have occurred at Yahoo!, whose head for China, Xie Wen, resigned last week only after one month on the job.
Google has about a 25% share of the China market, down from 33% at the end of 2005. Baidu, meanwhile, has 62%, up from 52% last year, according to data from China Internet Network Information Center.
The market share erosion was blamed on Google’s failure to grasp the use of Chinese language and its unfamiliarity the Chinese advertising business.
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