Google as both brand and verb seems to be lost in translation in China, write Janet Ong and John Liu (via Ireland’s Independent):
“G-O-O-G-L-E is not a normal Chinese spelling and people don’t pronounce it right,” Kai-fu Lee, Google’s president for Greater China, said in an interview in Beijing. “Most people call us ‘go go’.”. . . .
Google last year acquired the “G.cn” domain so users who misspell the company’s name still get directed to its Chinese- language Web site “Guge,” or “harvesting song.”
The adoption of that name in 2006 prompted criticism that it was a song about something going downhill because “gu” also means valley.
“It’s a name that would appear to have been picked by someone who doesn’t know Chinese,” said Liu Bin, an analyst at Beijing-based researcher BDA China Ltd. “It hasn’t helped their marketing.” [Full text]
[Google China logo via G.cn]
