Sohu, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in

Haidian District Haidian () is a northwest urban district of Beijing, bordering Xicheng, Beijing, Xicheng and Fengtai, Beijing, Fengtai. It is in area, making it the second-largest district in urban Beijing area (after Chaoyang, Beijing, Chaoyang), and is home ...

, 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 A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and received

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

funding from colleagues he met there. The following year, Zhang changed the name of ITC to Sohoo in homage to

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

after meeting its cofounder, Jerry Yang; 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 Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...

. Sohu's Sogou.com search engine was in talks to be sold in July 2013 to Qihoo for around $1.4 billion. On September 17, 2013, it was announced that

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

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 Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

stop providing its Google Pinyin 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. 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

* {{Authority control 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