> VC
Consumers have an app in their pocket that has everyone they know in it and can make a video call with two taps.
For corporate video conferencing there are paid solutions just like everywhere else.
So a free desktop app like Skype for video conferencing has no appeal.
> Baidu
The Baidu translate app has all those features and even a mini app for conversations in a walkie-talkie-like mode.
> Maps
You can set a future time for routing by public transit, and the real-time routing is pretty good. It doesn't try to predict road traffic conditions in the future. If Google has that feature I'd be curious how useful it is.
> Email
Big companies that have email have email systems. There's no demand for widespread public free email accounts because the public has no interest in email unless it's the only option.
I think the issue here is that it's easy to look at the features you use like Hangouts or Gmail calendar integration and think that Google is "ahead" technically. But in the Chinese market, the same needs are met in different ways by different products on a different mix of devices. So the features that you look at as "missing" haven't been developed because the market just doesn't care about them, not because Chinese internet giants lack the technical chops. They don't.
I think the way to look at it is not who is ahead, but that these are different markets with different values and the products look quite different, but you can't easily compare them by checking off features.