Google China’s New Head Confirms Keynote at TechCrunch China 2014 Conference

For those of you wondering about who would be the first keynote speaker at TechCrunch Beijing Summit, now we are confident to say that you would not be disappointed, for it’s been confirmed that Scott Beaumont—Google China’s new head since last August, will do us this honor.

On July 15, 2013, Google announced that John Liu, the head of Google China at that time, would step down in mid-August, and Scott Beaumont — then head of Google’s partnership in Europe, would take over Liu’s place.

Beaumont has a rich history in telecommunication industry. Prior to joining Google in 2009, Beaumont was the CEO and Founder of mobile app company Refresh Mobile from 2005, and operated as the VP of T-Mobile from 2000 to 2005.

At the time when Beaumont took over, Google China’s focus was AdWord and Admob, both being advertising. Google stated that Beaumont would “continue [Google’s] focus on helping Chinese businesses of all sizes grow locally and globally.”

In 2010, Google China had its conflict with the Chinese government over content censorship issues, resulting in the company’s main services to China have all but ceased, transferring its servers and domain to HongKong. The impact of this banning on Google China was conspicuous. Its search engine Google Now is still inaccessible to mainlanders, forcing hardware developers and companies to give up on commingling their products with Google in general.

In China, Google Play store is virtually nonexistent since it’s banned on mobile devices in China—a rather vulnerable situation for Google since it could not compete with Apple like it does outside of China. As Google Play cease to operate, hundreds of local Android stores sprung out of the Chinese market, making it’s a paradise for Android developers.