Lots of Innovation Going on in Google China
Google is innovating big-time with it's Chinese site, featuring functionality which isn't even available in the US. One such feature is a business directory. This is in addition to maps and book search, as well as some nifty features like being able to search in pinyin and having a 'Google Suggest' like feature, but in this case auto-completing characters and words. There's also rebang (hot ranking) which has shown up in Google's robots.txt file, but shows a 404 error.
Lots of features - Chinese language Google Web-portal anytime soon? Surely. Though quite a bit of polishing and user-centric stuff will have to be added or tied together. There are high expectations of Google, so it will have to deliver.
Yet it is a competitive market. Baidu is planning on launching a book-search service soon, and has signed some exclusive agreements with some Chinese libraries and universities.
The design of the Google-China Directory is appealing. AJAXified allowing the user to move things around and expand items, it still looks 'Google' in a clean shape, lots of white-space and pastel colours, which is in sharp contrast to most Chinese web-portals. Interesting to see how the design may change, as well as all of these features.
From a nose close to the ground, Google China has around 100 features under active development, many separate from innovation taking place on the main US site. Look forward to more (if you can read Chinese).
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