News Roundup: Google, Baidu, Sogou, QQ and Blogosphere

Written by Tangos on January 6, 2007
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About 1.8 billion USD venture funds invested into China in 2006: Zero2ipo Group said 2006 recorded the year of highest venture funding ever in China. As of December 31, 2006, $1.778 billion venture capitals has been invested into 324 Chinese enterprises, an increase of 52.1% yoy, but it is just a little more than the value paid by Google for Youtube.

Google announced its cooperation with China Mobile: Google will provide its search engine technology to China Mobile to enable “mobile search” on China Mobile’s Monternet WAP portal. Users will be able to access the service via search box on Monternet’s homepage, or through a mobile search homepage on Monternet. The first-phase service will be launched broadly in the early 2007. And some reports said Google China will formulate a technology standard for China Mobile’s service providers, to enable better index of their contents, is it something like wireless sitemap standard? The press release has not disclosed whether the cooperation is exclusive or not.

In the meantime, Google also announced it acquired stake in Xunlei, made the rumor finally official.

Sogou 3.0 launched: Sogou, the search engine service of Sohu, launched its 3.0 version on new year. Sogou claimed it has indexed over 10 billion Chinese web pages and updated about 500 million pages daily. It is the first search engine which is said indexed over 10 billion Chinese web pages. In Sogou’s web search, it added a “sort by date” feature which used to be found in news search or blog search. To promote its new version, Sogou held a search comparison campaign with results of Baidu and Google. At the time when I wrote this post, Google wins the contest, and Sogou beats Baidu.

Tencent announced its QQ will interoperate with China Mobile’s Fetion: There was market rumor for a long time that Tencent would have to cease its cooperation with China Mobile by the end of 2006, since China Mobile need to promote its own mobile IM Fetion. On December 29, 2006, Tecent announced(PDF file) that its current contract with China Mobile will be extended by six months. In exchange, Tencent and China Mobile will jointly develop a platform to implement interoperation between QQ and Fetion. I think that’s the first ever interoperation partnership signed by QQ. Tencent’s mobile QQ service will be gradually migrate onto Fetion’s platform.

Baidu starts to integrate its service: Baidu recently released a new service called Quanzi, something like groups in social networking sites, to integrate its Space and Post bar service. The manager of each post bar can create a quanzi for other users who share the same interests to join in. The members’ posts and photos in their Baidu Space will be shown in quanzis automatically. The service facilates the communication between users of Baidu Space, also promotes its Space service among users of Post Bar. With its Space, Post Bar, Zhidao and various services, Baidu will start to integrate them in 2007 to build a strong community, which will Baidu’s killer application to all its competitors.

The blogosphere of 2006 in Taiwan and Hong kong: Taiwan bloggers opened a wiki page in Wikia to collaborately record the blogging history of 2006, a Hong kong blogger Sidekick also has her version of blogosphere of 2006 in Hong kong.

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One Response to “News Roundup: Google, Baidu, Sogou, QQ and Blogosphere”

  1. Hello Martin » Blog Archive » Chinese Ventures getting A LOT of money on January 6th, 2007 4:21 am

    […] 1.8$ Billion invested in china in 2006 from venture funds(Way hyped…in china no quick returns exist!) Posted at 9:21 pm, Leave a Comment […]

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