Is Qihoo 360 about to launch a new search engine? That’s the word according to this new Sohu IT report, which claims that the image below is the homepage of Qihoo’s new search engine. Supposedly, the new search engine will be called Leidian and will be targeted mostly at mobile users, offering them a convenient platform to search for things like games, e-books, and ringtones.
The site will be located at leidian.com, with m.leidian.com designed for mobile versions. Neither link works at the moment, and a search seems to indicate the domain is actually for sale, although it is registered to a Beijing-based domain sales company and its DNS servers are pointing to Qihoo at the moment.
This seems to be one to take with a few grains of salt, then, but Sohu IT claims the search engine was originally supposed to launch this week, but has now been pushed back to next week. We have contacted Qihoo for comment and will update this story if we hear back. If true, it would seem to be Qihoo’s latest attempt at getting a bigger foothold in China’s search market, where it is number two but is still dwarfed by Baidu’s market share (which is generally pegged somewhere between 60 and 80 percent depending on whose numbers you believe). Still, both companies recognize that mobile is the future of search, and the market there could be much more competitive.
(Sohu IT via TechWeb)
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