Last December we reported that the Chinese web portal Netease is preparing a product search engine – a hot new area of competition on the web in China. And now, Marbridge reports, it appears to be close to launch as the Netease contender has a name and URL: Huihui.cn. Though not yet online, the e-commerce focused search engine is set to launch somewhere in the second half of the year.
Netease (NASDAQ:NTES) already has its own general search engine, at Youdao.com, and it’s thought that the Huihui product search and price comparison service will also display the “Youdao” branding once it goes live. Youdao already has a shopping section, but apparently that’s not specialist enough. It’s possible that the new site will focus more on price comparisons rather than just the current mish-mash of aggregated items.
It’ll be up against rivals such as eTao – made by China’s Alibaba Group, which runs several online malls – which has been a contentious subject of late, with some online retailers deciding to block eTao rather than play along with the e-commerce giant.
Netease will be hoping that it can use its claim of total independence as a way to bolster its new product search offering. But one other local web portal, Sina (NASDAQ:SINA), already has its own service, Yiqisoo, in action.
Netease’s Huihui search will aggregate product listings from numerous e-commerce sites in China.
[Source: Marbridge Daily]
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