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In America, much of Google’s success is attributed to its brilliant employees.  In China, there’s no reason that the situation would be any different, but as a bonus, the company could gain a competitive edge by hiring locals.

Google’s poor understanding of Chinese culture has been pinpointed as a reason for its failures in that country; an old Baidu commercial even portrayed Google as a Westerner with embarrassingly poor Chinese-language skills.  Hiring Chinese citizens might be an ideal way to overcome this image.

Furthermore, the practice could be beneficial to Google in many other areas.  “[T]he nation has such a huge talent potential,” Kai-Fu Lee, the president of Google China, told the AP.  “I think there will undoubtedly be innovation in China.”

Innovation is exactly what Google needs - the company’s search market share is approximately one-third of Baidu’s, and has shown little improvement over the past six months.  Also, Google’s a bit weak in the mobile department, and cell phones and texting are absolutely taking off in China.

Of course, nothing’s guaranteed to work - it’s not like Google hasn’t tried to reverse its fall in China before.  Eric Schmidt has given the division a pretty long leash, however, so no heads are likely to roll in the near future.