Description
UCWeb was founded in 2004 as a mobile browser maker. Over the past decade, it diversified to areas such as mobile search, mobile gaming, mobile reading, etc. According to iResearch, in 2014, the company's UC Browser was the most popular browser of its kind in China, with more than 66% market share. It's available in 11 languages (English, Hindi, Russian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, etc.) and on all major mobile OS platform (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Java ME, Blackberry, etc.). As of March 2014, UC Browser had over 500 million users around the globe. In April 2014, UCWeb and Alibaba Group jointly announced the formation of a JV named Shenma Inc. () that offers a mobile-only search engine in China. In June 2014, UCWeb was acquired by Alibaba Group in the largest Chinese Internet merger deal. This will see UCWeb form the Alibaba UC mobile business group by assimilating and consolidating part of mobile-related businesses within the Alibaba Group. After the merger, under the leadership of Yu Yongfu, chief executive of UCWeb since 2006, the Alibaba UC mobile business group will oversee the browser, search, location-based service, app store, mobile gaming, and mobile reader operations. In 2015 it was revealed as part of the Snowden leaks that UCBrowser leaks sensitive IMSI, IMEI and MSISDN data, which was used by intelligence agencies to track users.References
{{Alibaba Group Alibaba Group acquisitions Internet search engines Software companies of China Companies based in Beijing Companies based in Guangzhou Chinese companies established in 2004 Internet technology companies of China Software companies based in Beijing Chinese brands 2014 mergers and acquisitions