Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been wanting people in China to quit using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) for quite some time – but it didn’t want things to pan out like this. Now a rival web browser, made by Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) and called the 360 Safe Browser, has far surpassed the market share of IE as a whole, and is now reportedly used for 57 percent of all web surfing in the country.
But New York-based Digital Due Diligence (DDD) has evidence which suggests that Qihoo has used some seriously evil tactics to rope in users to its 360 Safe Browser. And it believes that these Machiavellian maneuvers – a total of nine are identified – have helped it to prevail in such a short time – just three years.
Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that Qihoo’s main business is, supposedly, anti-virus software. But with most of those anti-virus products being free, Qihoo generates nearly all of its revenue from its links portal hao.360.cn and general ad clicks. It’s an area that has provoked attacks by the short-sellers Citron who say that such old-fashioned links sites are unsustainable. But, on the contrary, Qihoo seems to be doing well out of it, serving as a sort of AOL to inexperienced web users at a time when millions of Chinese people get online for the first time each day.
And so its 360 Safe Browser is an integral part of all that, driving ad clicks on its portal as well as being, in Qihoo’s mentality, an integral part of its anti-virus platform.
But its tactics in forcing the 360 browser upon people are unacceptable, and render it something closer to malware or spyware. It looks to be exploiting the country’s not-too-savvy web users, infringing on their privacy, and even hijacking their choice of browsers. Here’s the list that DDD compiled explaining how Qihoo’s browser rose to the top:
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An almost identical icon to IE except that it’s green (pictured above).
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In the setup process, asking users to make it the default browser for links in other apps, such as in IMs.
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Using its 360 Anti-Virus product to fire up pop-ups reminding people that the 360 browser is safer than IE.
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Yet more pop-ups pestering people to set 360 Safe Browser as their default.
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Using 360 Anti-Virus to block other browsers from becoming default, as pictured here blocking the Sohu-made Sogou Explorer:
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