Google is continuing to test new strategies in China after the U.S. search giant released its first mini program for WeChat, the country’s hugely popular messaging app.
WeChat has become the key distribution channel in China and that’s why Google is embracing it with its first mini program - 猜画小歌, a game that roughly translates to ‘Guess My Sketch.’
© Image | mediaplus
The latest product, Caihua Xiaoge, is a drawing game based on Google’s AI image recognition technology, and is a WeChat ‘mini app’, which works only within Tencent’s WeChat.
You can find the game by
searching for it on WeChat.
© Image | HACOS
The app is a take on games like Zynga’s Draw Something, which puts players into teams to guess what the other is drawing. Google, however, is adding a twist. Each player teams up with an AI and then battles against their friends and their AIs.
You can find a basic English version of the game online at https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/ (VPN needed).
© Image | QuickDraw
The main news here isn’t the game, of course, but that Google is embracing mini programs, which could lead it to being more accessible in China.
‘When in China… play by local rules’ and Google has taken that to heart this year.
The company recently introduced a Chinese version of its Files Go Android device management app which saw it join forces with four third-party app stores in China in order to gain distribution.
© video | v.qq.com
This sketching game has lower ambitions but, clearly, it’ll be a learning experience for Google that might prompt it to introduce more significant apps or services via WeChat in the future.
Indeed, Google has been cozying up to Tencent lately after inking a patent deal with the Chinese internet giant, investing $550m in its close ally JD.com and combining on investment deals together, including biotech startup XtalPi.
That’s one side of a new initiative to be more involved in China, where it has been absent since 2010.
Google's mini-program on WeChat
© Image | WeChat
In other moves, it has opened an AI lab in Beijing and a more modest office in Shenzhen while it is bringing its startup demo day event to China for the first time with a Shanghai event in September.
Finally, in a touch of irony, Google’s embrace of WeChat’s ‘app store-killing’ mini programs platform comes just hours before the EU is expected to levy a multibillion-euro penalty on it for abusing its dominant position on mobile via Android.
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Source: TechCrunch
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