Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, December 23

• U.S. companies want to play China’s game. They just can’t win it. Netflix has a nifty new China strategy: Skip it. Facebook’s China charm offensive, which included Mark Zuckerberg studying Mandarin, has yielded little. Google’s search business and Twitter remain blocked. LinkedIn and Microsoft censor — and still, neither is a major player in China’s online space. Amazon.com is sputtering along against the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. After great initial success, Apple is being overtaken by local upstarts. For some highflying U.S. Internet businesses, the China dream is fading; for others, it looks radically different from what they had hoped. California’s Internet companies once dreamed of liberating China with technology, thinking that the system of censorship known as the Great Firewall would inevitably crumble like the Berlin Wall, paving the way for their advance in the world’s most populous nation. But President Xi Jinping has tightened, rather than loosened, control of the Internet and increased restrictions on foreign companies. Six years after Google retreated from China’s search-engine business over censorship and hacking concerns, U.S. firms seem more willing than ever to play the Communist Party’s game — they just can’t win it. Even if they can gain a foothold, which is hard enough, there is practically no way they will be able to overtake the Chinese companies that have comfortably established themselves.

• Blue Apron Put IPO Plans on Hold to Focus on Financials: Meal-kit delivery company Blue Apron Inc. has put preparations for an initial public offering on hold, people familiar with the matter said, delaying selecting bankers while it focuses on improving its financial metrics. After starting to interview banks in September to advise on the IPO, Blue Apron has pushed back formally hiring underwriters until some time next year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details aren’t public. Even with more than $800 million in annual revenue this year, the company has struggled to improve profit margins as much as management wanted in the face of more competition, the people said. A stronger performance is needed to support the $3 billion valuation that the company was targeting in an IPO. This month, Blue Apron competitor HelloFresh AG took a haircut on its private valuation when raising new cash. The Berlin-based company is now valued at about 2.09 billion euros ($2.18 billion) including new money raised -- about 20 percent less than 15 months ago. Plated, a smaller rival, is worth less than $200 million, one of the people said. Those valuations will be on investors’ minds when evaluating a potential Blue Apron IPO, the people said.