The New York Times has an interesting article today on thriving state-owned companies in China-”China’s Policies Ensure State Enterprises Grow“. The article makes no mention of China’s Internet industry, which will generate 6-7+ billion dollars in revenue this year from gaming, advertising and other sources, is growing 20% or more per year, and which has [...]
Baidu has quietly launched a software search engine. There have been no announcements, and no links to the site yet, but you can access it directly at http://www.soft.baidu.com. I learned about it through Sina’s increasing awesome Weibo microblog service. Baidu’s software search covers both mobile and PC applications. This is likely to be a very [...]
Tudou just announced that it has raised $50m, bringing the total amount the company has raised to $135m; no word on the valuation but hard to imagine it was lower than $200m. From the press release: Tudou’s Series E funding round included $35 million led by Singapore based Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. (www.temasekholdings.com.sg), and US$15 [...]
Most readers surely know that the media went into a frenzy over a story, a false one, that Google search was now fully blocked in China. Rebecca MacKinnon summed it up very well, and there is an interesting discussion led by Matthew Ingram here at GigaOm. The mindless replication of this “story” was amazing to watch; [...]
Last week I participated in a Sinica Podcast on the Internet in China and Zhang Wuben and his magic mung beans. I somehow ended up as the sole defender if the efficacy of properly practiced traditional Chinese medicine; the other guests seem to believe it is some kind of Chinese voodoo. From the Sinica site: Mere [...]
This post originally appeared on Sinocism.com, my blog about more general China topics. China’s efforts to build its “soft power” have been in the news over the last few months. So far none of the coverage of the media strategy for soft power has discussed what may be the fatal flaw in the government’s strategy-the [...]
On Thursday Fred Wilson posted a chart from Comscore listing the top 30 global Internet properties. There are six Chinese sites on the list-Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Sina, Sohu and Netease. The Comscore data significantly understates the size of major Chinese websites. I have borrowed the chart and inserted it below. Google’s Doubleclick Ad Planner has [...]
Ku6, acquired by Shanda (Nasdaq:SNDA) controlled Hurray Holdings (Nasdaq:HRAY) in November 2009, is now poised to become the first US-listed pure play Chinese online video site. I have written extensively about China’s online video business. To date more than $500M has been invested into various Chinese firms, with the field effectively winnowed down to four standalone [...]
Qiyi.com launched this week. It is a partnership between Baidu and Providence EquityPartners, an investor in Hulu. Qiyi flatters Hulu with a front page nearly identical to Hulu’s.
John Markoff of the New York Times discovered more information about the attacks on Google that precipitated the company’s retreat from China. In “Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System” he writes that: …a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password [...]
Items of Interest