Google Launches Life Search: Chinese Version of Google Base

Written by Luyi Chen on May 19, 2007
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Google ShenghuoYesterday Google China launched a classifieds search engine, called Life Search. It now includes housing, job, train ticket, goods and restaurant. This new service has been disclosed in last month.

Both life service and the universal search unveiled two days ago are vertical movements of Google, but they are in different dimensions. Universal search represents different types of information: text, image and video, etc. The life search is focused on specific things you are finding. But eventually they will overlap. For example, when you search for housing information in Google universal search, it will show you integrated result on Google Maps.

The search results are all from Google Base. Options and search UI are all identical to Google Base, if you are familiar with it. But Official Google Base actually don’t list these Chinese information. From this point of view, we can say that the life search is a localized version of Google Base.

This reminds me similar service like Edgeio’s Chinese version, Mulu100, that we introduced back in last November. But after a little digging, I can safely announce that Mulu100 has entered dead pool. It seems that the service has never taken off.

As to the leading vertical search engine Kooxoo, I don’t really think in the same way as Maitian. Although I agree with most part of his analysis, it’s still too early to announce its death. Google Base has been there for a while now. It hasn’t killed many startups. Neither will Life search, the Chinese version of it. And statistics service like this page still makes Kooxoo relevant for me to find specific information.

3 Responses to “Google Launches Life Search: Chinese Version of Google Base”

  1. Keith Teare on May 19th, 2007 9:39 pm

    Hi there,

    Love your blog. Just a note on mulu100.com. It certainly isn’t dead. We have over 2m items from China in the index and the traffic at mulu100.cn is exceeding expectations. It is worth stating that mulu100.cn was launched as an easy to use, Chinese version, of edgeio simply because we had so much data from China (about 20% of our organic listings) and also so much traffic (about 15% of edgeio traffic). What is interesting is that edgeio.com traffic from China is still about 12%, despite the existence of mulu100.cn. Why do you think that is?

    Now we have launched edgeio marketplaces in english, expect developments in China over the next 12 months.

    Thanks for the chance to clarify.

    Keith Teare
    ceo/founder/edgeio

  2. Luyi Chen on May 19th, 2007 10:26 pm

    Thanks Keith,

    With your participation, Chinese classifieds market will be less boring.

  3. dima on May 21st, 2007 7:18 am

    Yes, I like KOOXOO, a inovation startup. Google China can’t invent new products so it can only copy famous companies in China. I think KOOXOO,Sogou,Hao123,Baidu will success at the end.

    Inovation is the best competitive power.

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