The latest reports saying web portal Sohu (Nasdaq: SOHU) has broken off talks to buy online video site PPTV don’t surprise me too much, as I’ve come to expect this kind of volatility these days from Sohu and its fickle Chairman Charles Zhang. After disappearing from his company for a year for unspecified personal issues, Zhang has suddenly come back and appears determined to make up for all the time he was away by making sure his company appears in the news headlines as much as possible in connection with a string of potential new tie-ups. This kind of frenetic activity seems like what we should expect these days from Zhang, who has suffered for more than a decade as the head of what I’ve previously dubbed China’s “biggest little Internet company.” Continue reading →

A sudden rush to form new partnerships on China’s Internet is creating some interesting new tie-ups, including the latest one that is seeing e-commerce leader Alibaba join with security software firm Qihoo 360 in the e-commerce search space. This new pair-up actually seems relatively minor, with Qihoo using Alibaba’s specialized eTao search engine to power e-commerce searches on Qihoo’s own so.com general search site. (English article; Chinese article) This kind of tie-up isn’t all that uncommon in search, where portals and other companies that want to include a search function on their home page often license a third party’s engine like Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) or Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) for the job. Continue reading →