Google's former China boss says the search company won't stand a chance against today's Chinese 'gladiator' entrepreneurs

Disrupt SF 2018

Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China at the Disrupt SF 2018 conference.

• The former president of Google China told the audience at a tech conference in San Francisco on Wednesday that if Google returned to China it will have a tough time succeeding.
• Kai-Fu Lee suggested that Google's managers were not tough enough to compete with the local "gladiators" that are Chinese entrepreneurs.
• Lee also said that Chinese consumers would be tough for Google to reach at a time when homegrown Chinese companies are faring well.

Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China, doesn't give his former company very good odds of success if it decides to re-enter the Chinese market.

Speaking to an audience at the Disrupt 2018 conference in San Francisco, Lee suggested that Google's current management doesn't have the right stuff to compete in China's growing and rough-and-tumble Internet markets.

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"The heads of multinationals are really just professional managers," said Lee, who worked for Google from 2005 until 2009. "If they were to compete against local entrepreneurs who are gladiators in this Coliseum I don't think the American companies will have a high chance of succeeding."

Google managers last month confirmed that the company is considering a plan to once again operate a search application in China. In 2010, Google announced it had decided to pull out of China rather than adhere to the demands by the Chinese government to censor information. Apparently, managers have reconsidered their previous stance on censorship. ...

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