This Famous Google Exec Quit His Job To Work In China

[Nan Yang]

And He's Been Totally Blown Away By What He Found


For years, Hugo Barra was one of the most visible executives at Google. He was a product manager for its Android team. Every year at Google's biggest conference, Google I/O, Barra would show off Android's latest new features for the whole world. Then, in August of this year, Barra quit Google to work for a Chinese company. In December, he gave a talk in Paris about how utterly blown away he's been by that place.

This is Hugo Barra. Barra used to be a top executive in Google's Android division.

In August he quit to go work for the "Steve Jobs of China," Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun.


After just two months in China, Barra spoke at the Le Web tech conference in Paris in December.


Barra told his interviewer that he's totally blown away by the place. He said he had some charts to show why…


He said the Chinese are incredibly educated with 8 million college grads per year — more than the US.


He said Chinese disposable income is growing like crazy. It tripled over the last 8 years.


He said China has at least 122 billionaires, second only to the US.


Barra said China has 600 million Internet users - with 50% growth in 3 years.


Barra talked about some of the huge recent huge IPOs on the Chinese stock market.

 

[Nan Yang]

Barra talked about how Chinese Internet companies have massive user numbers. MAU stands for "monthly active users." QZone has 600 million!


Then Barra talked some specific Chinese companies. First he mentioned Alibaba, which owns Taobao, a shopping site he said is twice the size of eBay and Amazon combined.


Barra said that during a Chinese holiday called "Singles Day" Taobao did more than twice the sales all US e-commerce companies did on Cyber Monday.



He talked about JD, which does 3-hour delivery.



JD has an app you can use to see where your delivery guy is.




Alipay is like Paypal in the US, except it's much bigger and more useful. Barra says he uses to pay for his cabs.




Weibo is like Twitter, except bigger. Barra only ever had 6,000 Twitter followers. In two months, he has 200,000 Weibo followers.




Barra says he runs his entire social life through an app called WeChat. He uses it instead of the phone, email, or text messaging. WeChat also has an Instagram-like feature.

 

[Nan Yang]

The "Uber of China" is an app called Didi. Except with it, you leave a voice message for the driver telling him where to pick you up and how much you'll pay.



Barra said MoMo is an app you use to talk to strangers who are nearby you. It's kind of a dating app. It has 100 million users.


There's no Google Play store in China (it's banned), so there are a bunch of third-party app stores instead



One is called "91." It's a desktop app like iTunes. Big Chinese search engine Baidu bought it for $1 billion last year.


Barra says he loves China, and is trying to learn to speak the language. Here he is at his favorite dumplings place.

 

[qinglong-china]

Welcome to Xiaomi.

 

[JayAtl]

someone got his marching orders from dear CCP .

you will notice this propaganda post has no links to any article... just fluff piece because " look a white executive is employed in china because he choose to move there".

it would be funny when they find out he is a US spy j/k

 

[Götterdämmerung]

someone got his marching orders from dear CCP .

you will notice this propaganda post has no links to any article... just fluff piece because " look a white executive is employed in china because he choose to move there".

it would be funny when they find out he is a US spy j/k

You are just jealous that East Asians and Europeans have a fairer skin than you can ever dream of.

 

[JayAtl]

You are just jealous that East Asians and Europeans have a fairer skin than you can ever dream of.

That must be it, white skin after all is your guiding light, no wonder you get a hard on every time a white man says or does anything to make you feel complete. You are another shining example of that IQ we see coming from your ilk.

 

[Götterdämmerung]

That must be it, white skin after all is your guiding light, no wonder you get a hard on every time a white man says or does anything to make you feel complete. You are another shining example of that IQ we see coming from your ilk.

LOL, nobody said anything about skin colour until you started it. Your skin colour must be your sore point, otherwise why did you even bring it in?

 

[Edison Chen]

someone got his marching orders from dear CCP .

you will notice this propaganda post has no links to any article... just fluff piece because " look a white executive is employed in china because he choose to move there".

it would be funny when they find out he is a US spy j/k

How does it relate to CCP? It's all about his personal business, market strategy, and industry potential in emerging markets.

You overreact, sir, it's purely business.

 

[T90TankGuy]

Is this thread a desperate plea for self reassurance?

 

[Archdemon]

WGaF

 

[jhungary]

I don't see why this is any kind of news?

Businessman goes where the money is, I actually hired some American and Australian to my iron work factory in a China too... What is the big deal? China need technical and skill savvy person, and if they have money to offer, that would naturally be where people go

Going to work in China does not make it any better or any worse lol

At least they won't stay in China after their contract is over(per Chinese law) and most Chinese I know working in America and Australia stays

 

[gambit]

Is this thread a desperate plea for self reassurance?

Yes...It is.

 

[Kiss_of_the_Dragon]

Yes...It is.

No this is to show that we Chinese can afford to play American's game by bringing their best for our service. I forgot that you vietnamese can't compete against Chinese, the best you can do is bragging about others

 

[cirr]

No this is to show that we Chinese can afford to play American's game by bringing their best for our service. I forgot that you vietnamese can't compete against Chinese, the best you can do is bragging about others

Yes, when push comes to shove, these Vietnamese will even brag about the number of Vietnamese who got butchered by the Americans during the VW.