Chew Ning apologizes for Google's declining performance?
Zhou Shaoning has been the co-president of Greater China Area for one year. Therefore, from the point of time, his resignation this time is likely to be due to the expiration of contract and neither side chooses to renew the contract. However, because the rumor about his impending resignation spread in the sensitive period soon after the release of "2006 China Search Engine Market Research Report", so the industry has made a lot of speculations on this, most people think that Zhou Shaoning's resignation is to "apologize" or "pay" for the performance decline in the first year after Google entered the Chinese market!
Google officially announced its entry into the Chinese market in August last year, and then named Google China as "Google" in April this year. This is the only non-English name in the global market of Google, and also the first foreign name of Google. This move fully shows its determination to localize, but more importantly, it shows Google's emphasis on the Chinese market. However, the market performance in China has given it a big splash of cold water - according to the 2006 China Search Engine Market Research Report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in September, Google's market share in the Chinese search engine market was 25.3%, down 8 percentage points from the same period last year, continuing to widen the gap with Baidu, the local search engine. Although Google has been invincible in the global market, it has encountered a rare "Waterloo" after officially entering the Chinese market. Although this is closely related to the objective reasons such as its server not being in China, policy environment and other various reasons, Zhou Shaoning, who is responsible for marketing work, is indeed difficult to escape the blame.
Because, before officially entering the Chinese market and determining the localization strategy, there was still a market share of 33%, but after officially announcing the entry into the Chinese market, its market share did not rise but fell, how can the always aggressive Google swallow this breath? So, no wonder it would take action against senior executives in the China region. And if you want to take action against senior executives, who is more suitable to be the scapegoat? Only Zhou Shaoning! Because under the joint president structure model of Google, Zhou Shaoning is responsible for keyword advertising sales, business development, agent channel construction and other marketing work, while Li Kai-fu is responsible for technology research and development, personnel recruitment and other team building work. The work in charge of Li Kai-fu has little relation with market performance. In this case, if Google does not take action against Zhou Shaoning who is in charge of marketing work, who should it take action against? Moreover, Zhou Shaoning's contract is just about to expire, so it is very convenient to let him be the scapegoat without even looking for reasons!
Of course, as an internationally renowned company, Google has a good cultural foundation and atmosphere, perhaps Google will not be so short-sighted, our guess may be "judging a gentleman by a small man's standard", so it is also possible that the joint president company structure is not suitable for China's national conditions, so Google letting Zhou Shaoning resign to adjust the company structure is also very possible.
Some people think it is the result of cultural conflicts. However, judging from Zhou Shaoning's resume, this possibility is relatively small. Because he has the experience of studying in the United States and the experience of serving as a senior executive in an international large company, so he should not have too big a gap with Google in terms of cultural concepts, etc., the theory of cultural conflict is hard to convince the public!
Therefore, based on my guess, Zhou Shaoning's resignation may be due to the decline in company performance or the adjustment of company structure, or even the combination of these two factors, and it is less likely to be the result of cultural conflict.
