Google Returns to China with Group-Buying Site

Google has apparently decided to return to the China market by launching a group deal aggregator in China Thursday. It had essentially surrendered its China presence last March when it re-directed searches to its Hong Kong portal following a dispute with the government over demands for control over search results.

Google’s new China portal “Shihui” is in the experimental stage, with no direct link from its China homepage. Shihui is a search tool for group-buying opportunities that collects data from leading sites like Lashou, Meituan, Gaopeng, Groupon.cn and Nuomi. Shihui lets users seek bargains by site, category, price and discount range, but disavows responsiblity for the results, according to the site.

“Shihui is still in the early stages of development and we will cooperate with our partners to see what features drive the best traffic to their site and guide users to the most valuable results,” Google spokesperson Robin Moroney told IDG news.

Google’s new venture isn’t seen as a serious threat by group-buying giants.

“From the standpoint of timing, Google is late,” shrugged Hu Chen, co-founder of Tuan800.com, one of China’s leading group-buying sites.

The segment’s fast growth has prompted group buying sites to scrap the initial catalog-style presentation and offer more services such as discussion boards, customer service and platforms for secondhand goods.

“Google’s advantage in search techniques is no longer a killer,” Hu told Xinhua.

Google’s main search business has never enjoyed in China anything like the level of success it enjoys in the U.S. Even before pulling out of China last March, it was a distant second to homegrown search leader Baidu. Its foray into group-buying is unlikely to make a big dent with over 5,000 such sites already in business. However, Google’s decision to invest resources suggests it finds China too big a market to be left out of.