How frustrating is it to conduct a search on China's leading search engine and not easily find the correct answer? This happens often partly because Baidu censors itself; partly because it takes cash for making ads look like search results; and partly because it has little need to innovate as it sits high on its government-controlled perch looking over the China Internet landscape.
But a new venture is seeking to upend this frustration, at least for academics and scholars in China whose access to quality information is necessary to fuel the innovation China so desperately needs.
Sogou.com, the search engine subsidiary of Sohu.com, and Microsoft have reached a deal under which Sogou will gain access to Microsoft's Bing global search technologies and launch two vertical channels: an English-language search and an scholarly search.
Sogou's English search channel will reportedly cover trillions of English information from all over the world which will provide the most accurate English web page information and English academic data to users when receiving English search requests. At the same time, the English search channel will offer an automatic translation function, allowing users to gain English search results by entering Chinese words directly.
Sogou's academic-focused search channel will introduce Bing's precise academic knowledge mapping technology and build thesis-oriented knowledge mapping cards, including academic literature, academic figures, academic periodicals and academic conferences. It supports multidimensional filters of time, author, field, periodical, and conference as well as useful features such as quotes downloads.
Wang Xiaochuan, chief executive officer of Sogou, said they hope that the young enterprising new generation can equally and easily satisfy their curiosity of the world and explore new knowledge and information.
Financial terms of the deal were not released.
