Qihoo’s 360 Search Engine Launches, Already Spotted Using Dirty Tricks

Huh!?

The Chinese anti-virus company Qihoo 360 (NYSE:QIHU) launched its own search engine, so.360.cn, late last week. But already 360 Search is in trouble, accused of engaging in dirty tricks to get users to download its 360 Anti-Virus PC app.

It works like this: anyone who searches for “Google” in Chinese – on either the 360 Search page, or on Qihoo’s hao.360.cn portal (sort of like an early AOL links collection) – gets a mislabeled download link for the 360 Anti-Virus app as the second search result. Though the correct site is listed first, you can see in the above image that the totally inaccurate search result is much larger and accompanied by an image. We’ve reached out to Qihoo HQ in Beijing for an explanation, and will update if we hear back.

360 Search looks set to have quite a big impact on the search scene in China, as the afore-mentioned Hao 360 site is, so Qihoo claims, a huge source of web traffic among China’s 380 million desktop PC users, shepherding relatively new internet users to its paid links. Though both Citron Research and Anonymous Analytics have bones to pick with Qihoo over its traffic and revenue claims, Qihoo’s move into the search market will immediately impact on Google, Tencent Soso, and Sogou – and maybe even on search giant Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU).

Google used to be the default search engine on Qihoo’s Hao 360 portal, but is now usurped by 360 Search.

360 Search features seven main tabs: news, web, video, MP3, images, maps, and answers. For the moment, four of those link to Baidu sites (news, MP3, maps, and Baidu ZhiDao for answers), but it’s highly possible that Qihoo will come up with its own versions of those missing features pretty soon.

QQ Tech quotes the Chinese IT expert Wu Hongsheng as saying that 360 Search has already surpassed Google in terms of market share in China – but it’s far too early to have any proof of that.

As for the dirty tricks, it’s not the first time we’ve seen Qihoo engage in Machiavellian tactics to get ahead – just look how it locks users into its 360 Browser, helping push it past Internet Explorer in terms of market share in China.

[Source: QQ Tech - article in Chinese]

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Born from a tweet, OKListen is fast changing the Indie music in India

Starting up stories can range from awesome to outright boring, but none could have a better one than OKListen. Wanting to buy music from an Indian rock band, Vijay realized it was easier said than done. As the only way possible was when the band sent a CD by VPP, as they offered no MP3. A tweet later, the idea came was born and a few months later OKListen launched as a bootstrapped venture.

Founded by Vijay Basrur, who has 16 years of experience working in startups such as Baazee.com (now eBay India), Quikr and Synqua Games, OKListen is a pro-musician digital platform that helps musicians to sell their music directly to their fans and enables music lovers to discover new content from indie artists and support them. He brings with him expertise in e-commerce, mobile business and deep understanding of the consumer behavior in India to OKListen.

The website is plain gorgeous and has a minimalistic learning curve. The album art interface provides direct access to the newly released and the top albums on the homepage itself. Interface is clean and intuitive and provides links to sample the music or download it directly after entering the credentials. The user has the option to buy individual tracks from the album or go for the full album.  Features like mobile wallet with extra benefits are there to entice the listener. The price is affordable and is always set by the musician giving him greater remuneration and control on the music he creates. OKListen follows pro-artist model, where a 70:30 share of the net revenue.
Vijay accepts that rampant piracy is a problem and industry as a whole is suffering. But they are betting heavily on the patronage and the support of the indie-music loving community, so much so that all the music on the website is DRM-free and better still it is 320kbps.

They already have names like Raghu Dixit and the band Punkh to boast about, and they are in the late stages of signing-up a number of well-known artists on OKListen and making it appealing as a platform of choice for their digital sales.

Though the band which led to the creation of OKListen, is still not selling their music on the platform. But seeing the kind of buzz that OKListen has generated in its beta stage, we hope that disruption in the music space takes place in India and bands ultimately take the digital plunge.

Recommended Read: Flipkart Flyte : 5,000 downloads per day, Accounts for 1% of Flipkart’s revenue

Interview: Meet Raghu Dixit – Scientist Turned Rock Artist [His Entrepreneurial Story]

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Singaporean team at Quora develops and launches new feature called Embedded Quotes

A Singaporean quartet is responsible for Quora’s latest feature, called Embedded Quotes. It enables users to easily extract and embed full posts or snippets from Quora, a popular crowdsourced Q&A site from Silicon Valley, onto their own websites or blogs:

Read Quote of Introducing Embedded Quotes on Quora

Engineers Kah Seng, Kah Keng, and product intern Kah Hong are brothers. The team’s remaining member, Hongping, is a software engineer who previously worked at app2u and Microsoft.

Content from Quora can be freely published on other websites, unless authors specifies explicitly against it. The startup has so far raised USD 61M in investments, with the latest round being a Series B in May 2012. Its backers include: Peter Thiel, Benchmark Capital, Matrix Partners, Adam D’Angelo, and Keith Rabois.

Special thanks to Yaw Shin for the tip!

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GREE on Responding to Your Game’s Users After Release

There’s a great interview over at Edge Online with GREE’s (TYO:3632) senior vice president Taisei Yoshida, touching on the different ways that the company develops games, collecting user data after release and making appropriate adjustments throughout a game’s lifecycle. Yoshida notes:

The advantage for smartphone applications is that we can update each time if the users like it or don’t like it. By doing this we can retain users playing our games.

I encourage you to check out the interview in full if you can. We also spoke with him at last year’s Tokyo Game Show, and we’re looking forward to seeing GREE and a lot of other gaming companies at this years show, September 20 to 23.

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Empire Glory Makers Plan More Freemium Gaming Titles for iOS

Last week we reported that the number of startups based in the Chinese capital, Beijing, was dropping, and resolved to find web companies based outside of the usual startup hubs. Here’s another [1]: an app development studio that has so far churned out 25 iPhone apps, including one hit game in the form of Empire Glory (pictured right).

Set in the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history – as so many games are – Empire Glory is a complex strategy game with a good amount of citadel building thrown in. The ancient buildings have lots of nice details despite their tiny size on the screen.

The makers, LekuSoft are based in usually-chilly Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, in northeastern China. Jerry Lou is in charge of LekuSoft’s gradual foreign expansion, which so far is represented by just Empire Glory. But more are on the way:

The team has developed several upcoming iOS games, to be called “Crazy Texas,” “Glory Basketball,” and “Magic Stone” – due [to launch] in September.

LekuSoft staffers now total 50 individuals, Jerry says, with a focus on a mix of fun, random apps and a growing catalog of games. The apps – like Divining From the Book of Changes – tend to be paid, while a freemium approach is being taken for the games, with a bunch of in-app purchases available in Empire Glory so as to buy “gold” for your nation-building program. It seems a smart approach, as Chinese gamers are not too fond of buying apps, but are fairly likely to cough up some cash for in-app items.

For its games, the company has a storefront and community at 51leku.com.

Check out the international version of the free Empire Glory game on the iTunes App Store.

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1. Also see our story about the developers, aBit Games.  ↩

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Frenzoo collaborates with Condé Nast to cross-promote games

Hong Kong-based mobile games startup Frenzoo has announced last week that it has partnered with major magazine publisher Condé Nast to cross-promote each other’s games.

Involved in the tie-up are Frenzoo’s fashion RPG title Style Me Girl, and Condé Nast’s Fashion Hazard, a USD 0.99 Temple Run-like, ‘endless runner’ game. Although Condé Nast is certainly better known for publishing magazines like Wired, GQ, and Vogue, the company has an Interactive Product Group that develops experimental, interactive products not affiliated to its existing brands.

They include idea-sharing app Idea Flight and Christmas website Santa’s Hideout.

The promotional activities will involve crossover storylines where Fashion Hazard will be introduced in Style Me Girl, which has garnered 1 million downloads within its first 2 weeks of launch. In Style Me Girl, users will be able to play 3 Fashion Hazard themed levels, where they will dress their avatars for Fashion Week parties, runway shows, and more.

In Fashion Hazard, gamers can receive themed extras and special achievements.

Frenzoo has raised USD 1M in May this year to develop its MeGirl line of games. Participants in that round include: Efficient Corporate, Siemer Ventures, K5 Ventures, Metaverse Services, and Ambient Sound Investments.

According to AngelList, other prominent investors include Darius Cheung, founder of tenCube (acquired by McAfee), Paul Santos, managing director of WaveMaker Labs, Jamie Lin, founding partner of appWorks Ventures, and Felix Lam, co-founder of Makible.

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Telecom Roundup: Global pressure forces government to drop 50% local tools clause

Mobile companies see 7-8 per cent revenue loss due to bulk SMS ban

Restriction on SMS to five per day is not only causing problems for millions of mobile phone users but may also lead to loss of 7-8 per cent revenue of telecom operators for the month, operators’ association COAI has said. [source]

Global pressure forces government to drop 50% local tools clause

India plans to drop a controversial clause from its proposed telecom security policy that mandates that at least 50% of all ‘core telecom network equipment’ be indigenously developed or manufactured. However, the department has made a small concession and said that it would accept global certification of network equipment. The earlier version had said that all core hardware required for the telecom network could only be installed only after certification in India. – source

Telenor settles Uninor’s loans worth Rs.9,809 cr

Telecom operator Uninor has shared that its majority shareholder Telenor had settled all of the company’s loans amounting to Rs.9,809 crore after lenders turned down its request for extension of loans. Norwegian firm Telenor holds 67.25 per cent stake, and the balance is held by Indian realty company Unitech and its subsidiaries. [source]

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Maxthon Releases Mobile Browser for iPhone

China-based Maxthon, recently released its desktop browser for Mac OS X. And now the company has followed it up by releasing an iPhone Maxthon browser, and has incorporated some interesting features.

The most notable advantage of the new iPhone browser is the new start screen called ‘Quick Links Center,’ where you have an array of icons for most commonly visited websites. You can add and edit these links, and customize it to your own convenience.

The address bar is sort of Chrome-ish, and anticipates what you might be looking for by suggesting results from bookmarks, browser history, and search engines. One problem I noticed here is that while the search bar provides options to search Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask, the keyboard doesn’t allow for the input of a ‘space’ – thus limiting your search to one-word queries [1] (see below).

You have search options...

...but cannot do two-word searches. No space!

The other interesting feature is ‘Reader Mode’ which is not turned on by default, but makes articles more readable once you turn it on. Navigate to a web page and it will, after a second or two, present a readable version when possible. I can’t really call this an ‘attractive’ feature though, because unlike the many mobile reading apps out there, this one doesn’t add any pretty typography or styling. Indeed the text looks like plain html without any styling applied at all.

Maxthon for iPhone also brings cloud sync of bookmarks and favorites across multiple devices, as well as a download manager. Overall, I think it’s a solid alternative, and worth trying if Mobile Safari isn’t your thing.

If you’d like to give Maxthon for iPhone a try, you can get it here. If you’re on an iPad, you can try Maxthon’s previously released browser for iPad here.

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1. Maxthon’s keyboard in other areas, thankfully, has a space character.  ↩

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