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Search Engines Set To Vie For China
ackthpt writes "Could China be where the battle for top search engine is waged? Reuters is carrying an article on the play for the Chinese search engine market. Already the second largest internet market in the world, there are estimated 80 million users in China and the number growing fast. Yahoo's acquisition 3721.com, Google-styled Baidu.com and Zhongsou.com are already poised and profitable. Where is Google? Blocked at one time, Google has made its way into China. Their handy cached pages are not available, but they do offer the Ad Words service in chinese to lure business. Those unfamiliar with China's rapid adoption of the internet might like to read up on the success of DangDang.Com an online bookseller, on the BBC, where it's noted that houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access. Thanks to China coming in where many growing pains, suffered by the west, have already passed or obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace."
He's gonna need an awfully big boot...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wonder why China doesn't have a state-run search engine? They have a state-modified version of Linux (referring to RedStar Linux, I think...)
Seriously though, China has the largest population in the world with India at a close second right now. OF course their internet usage is BOOMING. Good luck to all those who design the search engines.
"Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky"-Pink Floyd
On the chinese google page, what are the three radio buttons for? I know my google doesn't have them.
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"Thanks to China [where] obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace."
Or at the very least, of dictators. Yay for the efficiency that comes with lack of choice!
There is much emphasis on the "growing" market for computers/internet stuff in China, and everyone who is anyone is trying to get into that market.
But does it really exist? The government has shown a marked distaste for anything that may threaten their power/viewpoint, and with many poor people in china (farmers, et al) does this market really exist, or are large corps. trying to forcibly open them up like they did with Japan in the early times?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
the popularity of the Internet in China. My in-laws are Chinese, living in Beijing. A coupla years ago, my brother-in-law got a cheap computer and a dial-up connection. Now he's just as much a net addict as the average western user. He uses email constantly, P2P networks, chat, online purchases... you name it. He just an average kinda guy too, not a techie.
It would be foolish for any large (maybe even some small) business to ignore the Chinese market. Give'm too much of a head start and they'll have their own market locked up tight internally.
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I'm robSlimo, the username is a product of frustration after losing the pwd to RatOmeter.
What is 3721 for? That like 1337 in chinese or something?
Baidu.com has an mp3 tab..
run a search for "metallica" or whatever..
kind of useful.. glad these guys can get away with that where mp3.lycos.com had to shut down.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
China has two modes: hypermodern and very obsolete. A big Chinese city is like a veneer of chrome and neon put on an old tile-roofed hovel- you walk down the main streets, and the buildings are new and the shops stylish. You take a turn and it's rows upon rows of little houses with carts of vegetables out front and pirated DVD stores in between. An "Internet Cafe" in America is a swanky establishment- modern PCs, business class high speed Internet connection, and lattes to sip. In China, it could be just as sophisticated, downtown. Or, it could be 5 clunker boxes sharing a 56k modem in a random little room on a back street.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Just curious.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
The real technical hurdle search engines will have to face lie in India, not China.
Chinese Dialects -
http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/dialectmap.htm
Indian languages -
http://www.sanyal.com/india/indlang.html
With a handful of dialects & Mandarin being the mainstream language, a Chinese search engine will have a comparitively smaller problem sifting through the problem space than an Indian search engine that would have to deal with content in 325 distinct languages ( not dialects...India has 1000s of dialects! ) with atleast 100+ different scripts.
Ofcourse, IT tends to penetrate the English speaking population first & foremost, so most search engines, as a first cut, focus on content written in English & ignore the rest.
houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access.
Glad to see they have their priorities straight.
.. which company wants to find itself in trouble when it search engine catalogues pages with anti-government sentiment. Because, even if there's major censoring going on, some will still get caught by whatever webcrawler they end up using.
His job in china is to not get placed in Jail AND beat Google... If his search engine works too well and indexs the 'wrong' stuff he could face prison time.
From CIA World Factbook on China:
Internet Providers: 3 (2000)
Internet Users: 45.8 million (2002)
Now I know these are dated, but c'mon ya'll, someone open up some ISPs there!! Do you think it's the government stifling competitior, or just that AOL can't afford to mail out 1.3 billion CDs there...