Liu, who oversees sales and business development in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, visited the SAR to introduce a new programme that will invest HK$100 million (US$13 million) to develop search engine marketing solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses in Hong Kong.
The initiative is part of a Greater China stimulus programme aiming to encourage Chinese businesses to use the internet to drive growth, with Rmb 50 million (US$7.3 million) invested in the SME sector in China.
Liu assumed his current position in September following the resignation of president and VP of engineering Lee Kai-Fu, who joined Google in 2005. Lee’s responsibilities were split between between Boon-Lock Yeo, director of Google's Shanghai’s engineering office, and Liu, who previously headed Google’s sales in the market.
According to Liu, the programme aims to introduce netizens to Google , both in terms of search – which mainly applies to mainland China – and businesses, which will benefit vendors in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The plans reflect Google’s efforts to jumpstart the brand in China. Despite being the top search destination in Asia-Pacific, commanding 44.1 per cent share, in China it trails local giant Baidu, which claims 63 per cent of China’s search market share.
Outside of its announced SME investment programme, Google is seeking to double its sales force by March of next year, and has launched a series of corporate education seminars in 25 cities across China.
Liu said Google China aims to attract new users in the market via mobile as many new internet users are discovering the web via their handsets, facilitated through the launch of 3G nationwide earlier this year.
In an effort to capture many of these new 3G users, Google announced in August that it would provide its Android platform to China Mobile handsets.
“In this part of the world, particularly Greater China, a lot of people get into the internet first by mobile,” Liu told MediaTV. “There’s a huge, huge potential that people start experience the internet via handsets so that’s why we wanted to provide this service.”
