• The Chinese State Enters Online Search (13th August) Wall Street Journal

Plans to build a search engine by China Mobile Communications and Xinhua News Agency mark at least the second time China’s state-run media have tried to enter the online search market.
Xinhua, in a news story about itself, said Thursday it signed a framework agreement with China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier by subscribers, to launch a search joint venture. It will “make full use” of Xinhua’s position in media content and China Mobile’s user base, Xinhua said, suggesting the venture will also promote Xinhua news articles.
The move comes after the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, in June launched a beta search engine, dubbed “People’s Search” in Chinese. The search engine has a snappier and perhaps more capitalistic English name, Goso, which might sound to a bilingual listener like “go search,” since the sound “so” means “search” in Chinese. (The newspaper’s online portal also offers a Chinese microblog service, called “People’s Microblog.”)
China Mobile Ltd., the carrier’s Hong Kong-listed branch, confirmed its parent company signed the agreement but declined to give details.
Xinhua, China Mobile and People’s Daily may dream of dethroning Baidu and Google as the biggest players in China’s search market. But that seems unlikely. Baidu took 70% of the revenue in China’s online search market in the second quarter, while Google took 24%, according to research firm Analysys International.
The People’s Daily search engine has gone largely unnoticed. Xinhua may not fare any better, though the ability to push services to China Mobile’s more than 554 million mobile subscribers will give the joint venture a better chance in mobile search. Xinhua did not say if it would focus on mobile search technology.
Then again, Xinhua’s story cast the deal as a national errand as much as a business venture. The cooperation is meant to “better serve the work of the Party and the nation and to practically protect national interests…and to expand the reach and the ability in and outside China of the country’s mainstream media to guide public opinion,” Xinhua said.
To excite consumers, the new partners will need a better marketing spin.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/08/13/the-chinese-state-enters-online-search/