group-buying

Google China unveiled a daily deal aggregator website named Google Shihui (Shihui means economical and practical in Chinese).

Google wants a share of group-buying sites' cake

With Google Shihui, users can search and browse daily deals of local group-buying sites by city, category, price, discount, etc. The website is currently in beta.

China's group-buying market has been growing very fast these past few months. Major actors include QQ Tuangou, Meituan, Manzuo, and 24quan.

However, the international group-buying website Groupon which teamed up with Tencent to launch Gaopeng in China faces many difficulties while entering the Chinese market.

With Shihui, Google China provides users with a group-buying aggregator only, and therefore focuses on its core business, namely search.

As the usual business model for aggregator websites, group-buying sites will have to pay in order to be visible on Google Shihui.

In addition to Baidu’s group-buying aggregator, Google Shihui will compete with 360’s and Tuan800’s. 

Google doomed in China?

However, releasing Google Shihui a few months after Baidu released its own aggregator may highlight the situation on China’s search market where Baidu beats all the competition (Baidu's market share was over 75% in terms of search revenue in Q2 2011).

After Google decided to redirect its Chineses users to its Hongkongese site, Baidu has been the one leading the dance, and Google now acts as a follower trying to catch up with the leader, especially since it has been loosing market shares for the past few months.

Google's move with Shihui means it is still interested in China. However, following what competitors do will certainly not be enough to succeed in the long term, especially against an experienced Chinese competitor...