Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

[tag]Google China[/tag] has a new name and the linguists are still out on the right meaning.

The current translations are “Valley Song”, Harvesting Song, [tag]Song[/tag] of the Grain, Song of the harvest of grain and even Happy Song. Eric Smidt, CEO of [tag]Google[/tag], calls it a “Fruitful and happy song”.

The whole renaming seems to be aimed at re-branding Google in [tag]China[/tag]. A bit silly to chinafy a brand name that is pretty much well known already by about 100 % of the average [tag]Chinese[/tag] internet users.

Will more people start using Google search because they will feel more comfortable using an [tag]esoteric [/tag][tag]valley song[/tag]? Time will tell, but probably not.

[tag]Google blog[/tag] China has a flash movie where the name is introduced.

It’s a dreamy, stylish movie based on the average [tag]Chinese calendar[/tag].

The text is used to introduce the new name, [tag]Guge[/tag]’s mission and that in the face of information everybody is equal and that links are votes.

I added (my pretty bad) translation to the flash movie so the non-Chinese readers among us can have an idea about Google [tag]marketing[/tag] in China.

Click here to see the flash movie with the translated text of the Google Valley Song Presentation (pop-up).

The name isn’t received everywhere in the Chinese society with heaps of joy. There is already a No Guge website where Google fans vent their opinion. Some of the quotes:

“The name “GuGe” makes us feel ill! Even more, it makes us disappointed!”

“It’s a bird name, a poor peasant busy doing the spring plowing”

One thing is for sure, it has given GuGe a lot of free publicity.

Sources: Virtual China, Google Blogoscoped, RConversations, Google China Blog, No GuGe