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Thursday, 13 March 2014

China Risks Another State-Run Search Engine Faceplant

The Chinese government is taking another stab at the domestic search market with a new service called "ChinaSo."

ChinaSo was formed by merging two already-failed search engines: Jike, launched three years ago by state-run newspaper/propaganda pusher The People's Daily; and Panguso, launched by fellow state-run media outlet Xinhua. Neither of those sites is believed to have ever garnered more than a 0.4 percent market share... so, yeah.

People trying to access Jike and Panguso are being rerouted to a beta version of ChinaSo. The home page has multicolored lettering and looks more than a little like Google.

China's search market currently is controlled by Baidu, which boasts a 60 percent share, followed by Qihoo 360 (25 percent).

Early predictions suggest that The People's Daily deputy editor-in-chief will be the search engine's president, and that Xinhua's VP will act as CEO.

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