Industry Internet Website www.sohu.com Customer service 00 86 10 5851 1234 Founded August 1996 | Products Online services CEO Charles Zhang (Aug 1996–) Founder Charles Zhang Number of employees 7,098 | |
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Type of site Public company (NASDAQ: SOHU) Key people Charles Zhang (President, Chairman, CEO)
Carol Yu (CFO) Revenue $852 million USD (2011) Headquarters Haidian District, Beijing, China Subsidiaries Sogou, Changyou, Sohu.com (Game) Ltd | ||
Sohu, Inc. (Chinese: 搜狐; pinyin: Sōuhú; literally: "Search-fox") is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. This company and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine, on-line multiplayer gaming and other services. For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2007, Sohu Inc.'s revenues increased 41% to $188.9M. Net income increased 31% to $35M. Sohu was ranked as the world's third- and twelfth-fastest growing company by Fortune in 2009 and 2010, respectively. As of August 2011, Sohu is the 44th overall in Alexa's internet rankings.
Contents
History
On February 8, 2005, the company reported a drop in fourth-quarter net income to $6.5 million. On December 23, 2005, the company was to operate an online TV station to provide point-to-point (P2P) video services in 2006.
Allegations against Google
On April 6, 2007, Sohu made a request that Google stop providing its Google Pinyin Input Method Editor software for download because portions of Sohu's IME software, Sogou Pinyin, were allegedly copied in order to construct it. The detection of the alleged copyright infringement was found due to a suspicious error found in both IMEs, notably the translation of the pinyin "pinggong" which erroneously produces the actor and comedian Feng Gong. On April 9, 2007, Google's spokesman Cui Jin has admitted that the pinyin Google IME "was built leveraging some non-Google database resources."
2008 Olympic Games website
In November 2005, Sohu was selected to be the Official Internet Content Service Sponsor of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Sohu was provided exclusive services to construct, operate and host the official Beijing Olympics website.
NASDAQ Listing
Sohu has been listed on NASDAQ since 2000. On 7 March 2013, reports surfaced that the company wanted to go private. However, Carol Yu, the Chief Financial Officer, of Sohu denied the rumor.
Recent news
Sohu’s Sogou.com search engine was in talks to be sold in July 2013 to Qihoo for around $1.4 billion. On September 17, 2013, it was announced that Tencent has invested $448 million for a minority share in Chinese search engine Sogou.com, the subsidiary of Sohu, Inc.