Yahoo have launched Yisou! (which apparently means Number 1 Search! in Chinese, wonderfully compact language) to China’s 95.8 million internet users.
Yahoo, whose services are available in 36 languages, claim that their search technology is behind nearly half of all internet searches. Note that the Yisou portal offers a cheeky little MP3 search tab right on the home page, whereas the European and American versions don’t.
The Chinese market obviously has massive potential for internet companies – with a population of 1.2 billion, of which 88% have yet to get on the internet, growth is all but guaranteed. Google have already got in on it by buying a stake in baidu.com, another search engine. By the end of the year, there are expected to be some 111 million internet users in China.