Sohu, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayer gaming (ChangYou.com) and other services.

History

Sohu was founded as Internet Technologies China (ITC) in 1996 by Charles Zhang after he completed his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received venture capital funding from colleagues he met there. The following year, Zhang changed the name of ITC to Sohoo in homage to Yahoo! after meeting its cofounder,

Jerry Yang Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (born November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. As of February 2022, Yang has a net worth ...

; the name was soon after changed to Sohu to differentiate it from the American company. Sohu has been listed on NASDAQ since 2000 through a variable interest entity (VIE) based in Delaware. Sohu's Sogou.com search engine was in talks to be sold in July 2013 to

Qihoo Qihoo 360 (; approximate pronunciation CHEE-hoo), full name 360 Security Technology Inc., is a Chinese internet security company that has developed the antivirus software programs 360 Safeguard and 360 Mobile Safe, the Web browser 360 Secure Brow ...

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. Sohu was ranked as the world's third- and twelfth-fastest growing company by Fortune in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

Allegations against Google

On April 6, 2007, Sohu made a request that Google stop providing its

Google Pinyin Google Pinyin IME ( zh, t=谷歌拼音輸入法, s=谷歌拼音输入法, p=Gǔgē Pīnyīn Shūrùfǎ) was an input method developed by Google China Labs. The tool was made publicly available on April 4, 2007. Aside from Pinyin input, it also inc ...

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 Feng Gong (; born 6 December 1957) is a Chinese actor, ''xiangsheng'' performer, director, screenwriter. and politician. He is best known for his performances in the annual CCTV New Year's Gala, having made more appearances on the show than every ...

. 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.

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, China, Companies, Internet Internet technology companies of China Companies based in Beijing 1996 establishments in China Internet properties established in 1996 Companies listed on the Nasdaq Chinese brands 2000 initial public offerings