Like almost all of the US Internet giants that have ventured this far, Google is losing in China. So too, are eBay, Yahoo and Amazon. But flush with cash, Google -- the world's leading search engine company -- is beginning to invest heavily in research and development here. In its latest move, announced on Friday, Google struck a deal to invest about US$5 million in one of the country's fastest-growing Internet start-ups, a company called Xunlei.com (
That follows another hook-up earlier this week, when Google said it would team with China Mobile (中國移動通信), the country's dominant, government-owned mobile telephone carrier, to offer mobile search services using the Internet.
In 2005, the company lured Lee Kai-fu (
The investment in Xunlei is small compared with Google's US$1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.com last October. But the deals announced this week are an attempt to be smarter about breaking into China's fast-growing but complex Internet market, which now has about 130 million users, making it second in size only to the US.
With Xunlei, Google gains another path into the rapidly growing demand in China for downloading music and video over the Internet.
"It's not YouTube, but it's close enough," says Richard Ji, an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley. "Xunlei is a very interesting company. It's a leader in video downloading and so this should help Google in the battle with Baidu."
Baidu.com (百度) is the dominant search engine in China. The Chinese Internet start-up, which began operating only a few years ago, has one of the most-trafficked Web sites in the world. The look of its home page is similar to that of Google, which invested in Baidu several years ago, but then sold its small stake in the company for a huge gain last year, after Baidu went public on the NASDAQ. Other big brand names here are Sina (新浪), Sohu (搜狐), NetEase (網易) and Alibaba.com (阿里巴巴).
According to iResearch, which tracks the search engine market here, Baidu had a commanding 63 percent share of the market in October, the most recent period for which data is available. Google was second, with 19 percent. Yahoo had only 7.6 percent of the market.
One of the most popular features on Baidu.com is downloading music through its MP3 program search service.
Xunlei, based in the southern city of Shenzhen, is gaining popularity. Officials at Xunlei.com say that more than 120 million people have used its software, and the company has also signed up some major advertisers, including KFC and Motorola.
Some analysts say China's tight regulatory controls over the Internet favor Chinese companies.
They also say Chinese companies have been better at creating Internet products for the particular taste of the Chinese. For that reason, some US Internet giants are increasingly looking for Chinese partners.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last