Google has been looking for ways to re-enter China. But as The Information’s snapshot of Google’s former employees in China shows, in some ways it never left.
Every few months, several dozen people who used to work for Google in China gather at a trendy Shanghai restaurant. The attendees are a veritable Who’s Who of China’s technology sector, including a vice president from social network Tencent; the chief technology officer of the Nasdaq-listed BiliBili video-sharing app; the CEO of English-teaching app Liulishuo; and the COO of Hong Kong–listed ZhongAn Insurance.