 | |
| Type of business | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | Nasdaq: SOHU |
| Founded | August 1996; 28 years ago (1996-08) |
| Headquarters | |
| Founder(s) | Charles Zhang andEdward Roberts |
| Key people | Charles Zhang (president,chairman,CEO) Carol Yu (CFO) |
| Industry | Internet |
| Products | Online services |
| Revenue | .86 billion USD (2017)[1] |
| Employees | 7,098 (December 2012)[2] |
| URL | sohu |
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Sohu, Inc. (Chinese:搜狐;pinyin:Sōuhú;lit. 'Search-fox') is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza inHaidian District, Beijing.[3][4] Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayergaming (ChangYou.com) and other services.
Sohu was founded asInternet Technologies China (ITC) in 1996 byCharles Zhang after he completed hisPhD from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology and receivedventure capital funding from colleagues he met there.[5] The following year, Zhang changed the name of ITC toSohoo in homage toYahoo! after meeting its cofounder,Jerry Yang; the name was soon after changed toSohu to differentiate it from the American company.[6] Sohu has been listed on NASDAQ since 2000 through avariable interest entity (VIE) based inDelaware.[7][8]
Sohu'sSogou.com search engine was in talks to be sold in July 2013 toQihoo for around $1.4 billion.[9] On September 17, 2013, it was announced thatTencent has invested $448 million for a minority share in Chinese search engineSogou.com, the subsidiary of Sohu, Inc.[10]
Sohu was ranked as the world's third- and twelfth-fastest growing company by Fortune in 2009 and 2010, respectively.[11][12]
On April 6, 2007, Sohu made a request thatGoogle stop providing itsGoogle PinyinInput Method Editor software for download because portions of Sohu's IME software,Sogou Pinyin, were allegedly copied in order to construct it.[13] 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 comedianFeng Gong.[14] On April 9, 2007, Google's spokesman Cui Jin has admitted that the pinyin Google IME "was built leveraging some non-Google database resources."[15]
In November 2005, Sohu was selected to be the Official Internet Content Service Sponsor of theBeijing 2008 Olympic Games. Sohu was provided exclusive services to construct, operate and host the official Beijing Olympics website.[16]
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