Published: 12 Dec 2007

"G-O-O-G-L-E is not a normal Chinese spelling and people don't pronounce it right," Kai-fu Lee, Google's President for Greater China reportedly said. "Most people call us `go go'."

Internet addresses in China are based on the Hanyu Pinyin system that translates Chinese characters into roman letters. Sounds such as "gle" don't exist, as per the same report.

"That's a big problem for us,"' Lee said.

"Google last year acquired the "G.cn" domain so users who misspell the company's name still get directed to its Chinese- language website "Guge"' or "harvesting song". The adoption of the name in 2006 prompted criticism that it was a song about something going downhill because "gu" also means valley," reported Bloomberg.

Google has increased the number of engineers in the Greater China region to 200, its biggest research and development team outside the US, by offering higher salaries and perks such as free massages.

Lee, recruited from Microsoft Corp. in 2005 to expand Google in China, said he will try new advertising strategies to overcome the language barrier. He declined to provide more information. The company will begin "some experimentation" for advertising in the next 30 days, Lee said. "In China, we need to do more. If people don't know Google is a search engine, or if they can't spell Google, they don't know you are better."