Kuei’s appointment fills the void left by the departure of Crid Yu, who takes up a regional role as director of new initiatives, based at Google’s head office in Mountain View, California (Media, 23 March).
Kuei, who has been tasked with business strategy and developments in Taiwan and Hong Kong, boasts 19 years experience in the internet, technology and communications sectors. She will lead the charge as the search giant gears up for the next phase of the battle against Yahoo, which counts about 40 per cent of the Hong Kong market, compared with Google’s 38 per cent (Hitwise, May 2007). “Our business is growing quickly, so we need to make sure we resource it accordingly in terms of sales and marketing to continue the business Crid built,” said Kuei, who was previously with Microsoft Taiwan, responsible for marketing and sales of Microsoft Windows.
Kuei’s appointment comes as iGoogle, Google’s new personalised global platform, launches in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Aimed at improving connections with web 2.0 consumers, the new templates feature time-sensitive mastheads — which change from day to night depending on when the user accesses the site — while also offering personalised news functions, search rankings, daily tool sections and tabs displaying Google’s additional functions.
“Based on our research, we know that a lot of people are currently using portals as their homepages, but increasingly, we’re seeing people setting search,” said Kuei.
She said that while much of Google’s promotional strategy would continue to revolve around word-of-mouth initiatives and trial in favour of more traditional marketing strategies, the new platform would incorporate a competition in which the ultimate winner scores a trip to Google’s headquarters in the US.
