google eventually agreed to create a chinese interface, but that was in the way of the silicon valleyay of the world where one platform would serve the world, and that egocentricity would have caused every american company to fail in china. also, if you look at the new companies that rose up in china in a very tough competitive environment, i think wechat is clearly a better product than facebook messenger, taobao is better than amazon, and the chinese payment system fully connected, frictionless, micro-payment, peer-to-peer. it is clearly better than paypal and credit cards. many people compare it with gladiators in the colosseum and i am afraid the silicon valley companies are not gladiators. they would get killed in china. emily: you left google in 2009, google left china a few months later. what happened? kai-fu: i had no idea. i was surprised. "new york times" called me one morning and said, what is going on? can we get a quote from you? what and they said google just left china. i said, i have no idea. i can't give you a quote. then i read about it in the news. emily: google sai