China’s Tencent To Focus More On Search Engine Services

With the slogan of “Soso knows you better”, the Chinese Internet company Tencent has announced plans to set up its fifth major business division for the development of search engine services in 2010.

Tencent said that it will create individualized, socialized, intelligent and mobile search engine services with Tencent characteristics at its Soso.com search engine.

Xiong Minghua, chief technology officer for Tencent, told local media that the company has already invested between CNY400 million and CNY500 million in the research and development of its search engine product over the past four years. Tencent will invest more in the future and it has already set up its fifth major business division for the establishment of the favorite search engine services for its users. He said that the national agent channels of its search engine products, Soso.com, have been initially completed.

Xiong added that Soso.com will continue to hire high-end search engine technology and management staff. Its technology and management teams will also be expanded. With Google now out of the picture in China, Tencent is hoping to seize this opportunity to grab more market share.

So far, Soso.com has reportedly completed 25 independent products that cover Tencent’s six major product lines, including web search, vertical search, community search, business search, wireless search, and client products.