?US search engine giants Yahoo! and Google seem to be
duking it out for a dominant position in the world's most populous
country by launching new services and partnering with local
companies.
Yahoo! launched a search engine portal, Yisou.com, in Beijing on
Monday. It is the first time the company has registered a new
website for its search engine service in a country outside the
United States.
"Many things that we did not do in any other Yahoo! markets were
done in China. These moves show our strong commitment to this
market," said David Lu, deputy managing director of Yahoo!'s North
Asian operations.
The search engine portal has a clean and simple interface
similar to professional search engine service providers such as
Google and the Chinese firm Baidu.com.
Yahoo! will relocate about 1,000 search engine servers from the
United States to China next month. They will be used to provide
services for Chinese users around the world.
Lu said that Yahoo! would not focus on short-term returns from
Yahoo! China and the new services.
Zhou Hongyi, president of Yahoo! China, said he believes that
the launch of the new search portal will change the competition
scenario in the country. "If we say the competition in China was
mainly between Google and Baidu before, in the future it will be
between the two alliances: Yahoo!-3721 versus Google-Baidu."
Last year, Yahoo! acquired Hong Kong-based 3721 Network
Software, which controls Beijing 3721, for US$120 million.
Google, which has not had a physical presence in China, last
week invested a reported US$10 million in Baidu, a major Chinese
search engine. Participation of Yahoo! and Google?is expected
to have a significant impact on the search engine market because of
their huge capital and rich experience in the field.
(China Daily June 22, 2004)