[photopress:macbeth.jpg,full,alignright]Google, which is China’s second-most-popular search engine (Baidu is first by a considerable margin) has entered a partnership with Sina.com. Together they will cooperate in Web search, news and advertising – and, unsaid but definitely on the agenda, do battle against Baidu.
Google’s Web page search service will be embedded in Sina’s search box, allowing users to easily switch between online content and Web search. It is a neat idea. The only question is whether the public will go for it.
Lee Kai-Fu, vice president of Google and president of Google China, said, ‘Google can take advantage of the already successful and popular platform built by Sina for deeper market penetration in China.’
Possibly. Perhaps. Maybe.
Experience elsewhere has been that people go to a web site for a specific purpose. An add-on has to relate to, and preferably, enhance, the purpose for the original hit. Otherwise ‘it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ That will do as an example.
I wanted to make sure the quotation from Macbeth was correct so I went to Google. Not Yahoo. Not MSN. Not anywhere else. Google. For that is where I can search for phrases. A specific reason.
If there had been an email component to that page it would not have tempted me in the slightest. If eBay had been there I would have ignored it. I went there for a specific purpose. I did not go there even to get the splendid illustration of Macbeth at the top of this item. I did that with a later search. In Google but for images.
Internet portal Sina ranks No. 3 among all Chinese Websites in terms of online traffic but comes after the search engine Baidu.com.
The Google.cn site ranks No. 8, according to Web ranking service Alexa.com which, in itself, is double suss. Never take Alexa figures as meaning too much. Sometimes, indeed, they are ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
Sina Chief Executive Officer Charles Chao said the portal will retain its own search platform, iask.com, but will focus on news, video and picture search and add more investment.
Chao said the two companies are still working out details for cooperation on content. The Macbeths had the same problem.
At a guess they will strut the stage for more than an hour. But the results will ultimately be disappointing.
Source: Shanghai Daily