Sogou, the second largest search engine in China by market share is expecting to grab a bigger bite to gobble up over 15% of search market by the end of this year, according to Wang Xiaochuang, CEO of the company. The hope is primarily pinned on its soon-to-be-released discover engine.
Currently, Sogou holds about 8% of China’s search market.
The so-called discover engine, Wang xiaochuang explained in an interview with local portal site Tencent Tech, would disrupt the traditional keyword-based search experience by voluntarily recommending contents to users based on its understanding and analysis of users’ browsing history.
He didn’t mention if there’re any concerns over user privacy though.
The company’s third quarter financial report recorded a robust growth with US$ 37 million in net income, or 102% yoy growth and 23% qoq growth.
Speaking of Qihoo360’s aggressive attack on the market, Wang thought that Qihoo is gaining at the cost of Baidu’s traffic, the competition hasn’t incurred significant impact on Sogou yet.
I guess that’s because almost all Sogou’s search traffics come from its own Sogou browser, which default search engine to Sogou.com The browser served like a fort to protect Sogou’s business. Unfortunately for Baidu, it doesn’t have a strong fort like 360 Safe Browser or Sogou Browser yet.
Robin Li, founder and CEO of Baidu also realized the disadvantage, in an internal email to all Baidu staff sent several days ago, Li said that “In addition to the core business” Baidu should also “enhance the enabler and protector!”. He went on to explain that “Baidu should invest into services that funnel more users to Baidu search, for example, browser. You’re well positioned in the market, but if other people want your share and they just get it, there must be problems. You need something to protect yourself.”
For example, a much better Baidu Browser.
Sogou results page