Qihoo Takes on Baidu in China's Search Engine Wars

In the past few years, Zhou Hongyi, the 43-year-old co-founder of Chinese antivirus company Qihoo 360 Technology, has engaged in high-profile legal conflicts with Yahoo China and Tencent, which operates China’s QQ instant-messaging service. Zhou says he’s used to rubbing competitors the wrong way. “In China,” he says, “newcomers are normally viewed as troublemakers.”

Zhou’s company is now taking on the dominant player in the search business. Qihoo (pronounced CHEE-HOO) makes money by selling ads through its browser and its free antivirus software. But its browser didn’t have a built-in search engine until last August, when Qihoo released a search feature that lets it keep traffic from users’ queries instead of directing it to a rival. The move put Qihoo in competition with Baidu, which last year controlled 80 percent of China’s search market by revenue, says Chinese Internet industry consulting group iResearch.