Google may not always let Chinese citizens search for terms like “democracy,” but it’s apparently got no problems with things such as housing, work, and train tickets; a new Life Search engine available through Google China is tailored to deal with precisely these types of classifications.
Luyi Chen of China Web2.0 Review dubs the new service “a classifieds search engine,” and since his Chinese is likely better than mine, that definition is good enough for me. “The search results are all from Google Base,” he reports. “Options and search UI are all identical to Google Base, if you are familiar with it.”
And, despite the amount of time, money, and effort that the search engine giant has funneled into Google Base, Chen still doesn’t see Google’s newest offering in China as a threat to existing engines. He notes, “Google Base has been there for a while now. It hasn’t killed many startups. Neither will Life search, the Chinese version of it.”
Google Blogoscoped has provided a screenshot of Life Search, and of the English translation of the page. In addition to the categories mentioned earlier, Life Search boasts tabs for “items” and “food,” but, as Chen implies, there’s nothing revolutionary.
Google may need to come up with something impressive if it ever wants to succeed in China; although it’s dominating the American search market (as always), the Mountain View-based company still falls far behind competitor Baidu in China’s corner of the world.
