Shenma Inc. () is a "mobile-first"

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

for China that was launched in April 2014. It is a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between

Alibaba Group Alibaba Group Holding Limited, branded as Alibaba (), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in E-commerce in China, e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Founded on 28 June 1999 in Hangzho ...

and

UCWeb UCWeb Inc. (also known as UC Mobile) is a Chinese mobile Internet company that offers products and services that include mobile browser, UC News, and search engine services. Its flagship product, UC Browser, topped the Chinese, Indonesian an ...

Overview

In April 2017, according to China Internet Watch, Shenma had an 8.8% of the China search engine market share, which made it the second most used search engine after

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

. Shenma comes with

UC Browser UC Browser is a web browser developed by mobile internet company UCWeb, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group. It was the most popular mobile browser in India, Indonesia, and Mali, as well as the second-most popular one in China as of 2017. Its w ...

, a

mobile browser A mobile browser is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone, PDA, smartphone, or tablet. Mobile browsers are optimized to display web content most effectively on small screens on portable devices. Some mobile bro ...

with an estimated 20% share of China's browser market and over 30% of China's mobile browser marketshare. Shenma search was co-founded as a mobile search engine by

and Alibaba in 2013. In 2014, Alibaba acquired UCWeb.

Litigation

On April 13, 2020, Shenma filed a lawsuit against

Sogou Sogou, Inc. () is a Chinese technology company and subsidiary of Tencent. The offices of Sogou are located in Beijing on the southeast corner of Tsinghua University. Sogou also has offices in Chengdu, co-located within Tencent's office build ...

for traffic hijacking. In the filing, the mobile search company accused Sougou of misleading and reeling in potential Shenma users through Sogou Input Method, and for illegally trafficking data. Shenma told the court that the hijacked traffic data reached 1.897 billion. Shenma was seeking RMB 102 million (around $16 million in American dollars) in compensation. On June 27, 2019, the

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

Haidian Court ruled that the Sogou search company was guilty of hijacking

UC browser UC Browser is a web browser developed by mobile internet company UCWeb, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group. It was the most popular mobile browser in India, Indonesia, and Mali, as well as the second-most popular one in China as of 2017. Its w ...

and Shenma search traffic through candidate words, constituted unfair competition. They were sentenced to pay a fine of 20 million yuan.

References

Alibaba Group acquisitions Companies based in Beijing Internet search engines Online companies of China Internet properties established in 2014 Chinese brands 2014 establishments in China {{China-company-stub