Type Private Area served Worldwide Services Computer security Founded 2005 CEO Zhou Hongyi (2006–) Number of employees 4,200 | Industry Computer software Products Security softwares Founder Zhou Hongyi Headquarters China Revenue 1.39 billion USD (2014) | |
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Key people Zhou Hongyi, Qi Xiangdong, Cao Shu (Chief Engineer & Director), Xu Zuoli Alex (Co-CFO), Yao Jue (Co-CFO) Subsidiaries Tech Time Development Limited | ||
How to remove qihoo 360 total security antivirus from your computer and glasswire firewall
Qihoo 360 (Chinese: 奇虎 360; pinyin: Qíhǔ Sānliùlíng; approximate pronunciation CHEE-hoo), full name Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., is a Chinese internet security company known for its antivirus software (360 Safeguard, 360 Mobile Safe), Web Browser (360 Browsers), and Mobile Application Store (360 Mobile Assistant). It was founded by Zhou Hongyi and Qi Xiangdong in June 2005. Qihoo 360 had 496 million users for its Internet Security products and 641 million users for its Mobile Antivirus products as of June 2014.
Contents
- How to remove qihoo 360 total security antivirus from your computer and glasswire firewall
- Qihoo 360 reduces costs and shortens time to market using aws
- Business model
- Products
- Financials
- History
- Controversies
- References
The company's head office is in Chaoyang District, Beijing.
Qihoo 360 reduces costs and shortens time to market using aws
Business model
Qihoo 360 initiated its business operations by selling third-party antivirus software online. Soon afterwards they realized the potential of the freemium business model in the Chinese market and started providing their own antivirus products free of charge. In a short period of time, Qihoo 360's security products gained popularity and market share in China. Their current revenues are generated by leveraging their massive user base through online advertising and services such as online games, remote technical support, and system integration.
Products
Financials
Qihoo 360's main revenue sources include advertising space on 360 Startup Page, as well as revenue sharing with independent games developers which have published their games on the 360 Mobile Assistant. The revenue breakdown in 2012 was split between the revenue streams as follows: 67% from advertising, 31% from internet value added services and less than 1% from selling third party software. The revenues increased by 96.0% from $167.9 million in 2011 to $329.0 million in 2012. As of January 2014, the market cap is $11.42B.
History
In the summer of 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the smartphone market by launching the Battleship phone together with Haier, the large Chinese consumer electronics company. Qihoo 360 said that Haier will provide the hardware while Qihoo 360 will focus on customising the software, albeit the main operating system will be Android. Qihoo 360 received over 220,000 pre-orders for the phone the first day.
Later in 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the search market by launching so.com, thereby directly competing with Baidu, the dominant search engine in China. Qihoo has seen its share of unique visitors quickly grow to 10.52%. "Sōu" (搜) in Chinese means "search".
Most recently, Qihoo 360 has struck deals with major technology companies Google and Nokia for search and mobile phone partnerships, respectively.
On July 18, 2013, Qihoo launched its new search engine leidian.com, which aimed at increasing its presence in the mobile market.
The firm announced at the end of July in 2013 that it was in early talks to acquire Sohu.com’s Sogou.com search engine for around $1.4 billion.
In 2013, the company announced they would like to expand into overseas market with English, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, German, French and Korean languages support. Currently they are recruiting languages talents to develop this kind of software.
December 2013, the company increases stake in Brazilian Tech Company PSafe.
On July 11, 2014, the company has set up a venture capital (VC) fund in Silicon Valley.
In early 2015, Qihoo rebranded its so.com search engine to redirect to haosou.com. "Hao" in Chinese means good; Haosou directly translated to English means "good search engine".
On December 18, 2015, Qihoo 360 said it agreed to be acquired by a group of investors in a deal valued at about $9.3 billion. On July 15, 2016, Qihoo 360 announced the finalization of its take-private transaction.
On July 18, 2016, Qihoo 360 bought most of Opera Software for 600 million USD. On 4 November 2016 Golden Brick Capital (Qihoo included) completed the acquisition.
Controversies
Qihoo has been described by Forbes as a confrontational and litigious company due to its involvement in various anti-competition lawsuits.
The company was involved in lawsuits with Tencent, starting with the 360 v. Tencent dispute, as well as other companies such as Baidu, Emiage, Sogou.
The company has been accused by Anonymous of overstating the volume of traffic to its site in order to attract advertisers.
The antivirus testing companies, AV-Comparatives of Austria, Germany's AV-Test and Virus Bulletin of the UK have accused Qihoo of providing for testing its anti-virus equipped with a Bitdefender engine, while the consumer version uses Qihoo's own QVM engine.
According to documents released by Mozilla Corporation, Qihoo appears to have acquired a controlling interest in the previously Israeli-run Certificate Authority "StartCom", through a chain of acquisitions, including the chinese-owned company WoSign. WoSign also has a CA business; WoSign has been accused of poor control and misissuing certificates. Furthermore, Mozilla alleges that WoSign and StartCom are in violation of their obligations as Certificate Authorities in respect of their failure to disclose the change in ownership of StartCom; Mozilla is threatening to take action, to protect their users.