tough competitive environment, i think wechat is clearly a better product than facebook messenger, taobaos 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 said they did not want to respond to the censorship demands of the chinese government. was that the right call? kai-fu: it is hard to say what is right or wrong. i think if, google is a very value-centric company, so it will do things according to its values, for which we all respect, but on the other hand that makes it