Huicong International Information, which determined to be the world's largest Chinese search engine provider announced at a release conference on December 23 the birth of the professional search brand "China Search Online" (www.zhongsou.com), a latest progress made by this provider who aims to challenge Google.
The IT company well-known in China is making strides recently and has taken over the search businesses of many portal web sites such as Sina, Sohu, Netease, China.com and 263.net. The "China Search Union" Huicong International Information co-established with China.org has attracted over 600 media units, taking up over 60 percent of domestic search market share. The brand advantage is quite obvious. On December 17, it successfully got listed in the Growth Enterprise Market of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong with an investment of 150 million HK dollars.
Chinese search engine has been long monopolized by "Yahoo", "Google" etc. The several domestic providers are merely imitating without their own characteristics in terms of brand and technology.
At the introduction meeting, Chen Pei, CEO of China Search Online and the inventor of the "Third Generation Chinese Search Engine" showed their news center. People felt surprised hearing Chen Pei's introduction about the news center established completely with the latest search technology and with no editor. According to Chen, the web site is established with their newest "News Search" technology through which readers can view the latest news released in the latest several minutes on the Chinese web sites worldwide.
Chen Pri also demonstrated the characteristics of the "Third Generation Chinese Search Engine" which supports Chinese "pin yin" input, provides correction of homophones and can identify "Southern accent". It also provides business and position services, claiming that the core of the "Third Generation Search Engine" is intelligence and characteristic. Chen also showed the technological advantages of China Search Online as against other search engines such as Google.
Personage concerned held that there will be an all-around change in the checkerboard of search engines with the "Third Generation Search Engine" as a breakthrough. China's search engine market will inevitably transform to the most excellent operators, for which the gathering of famous domestic portal web sites under the "China Search Online" is just a proof.
(People's Daily December 25, 2003)
