Microsoft is to increase search market share in China by powering China Telecom’s new search engine called 114 (114.vnet.cn) through the new Windows Live Search (later changed to Microsoft Bing search engine).
The 114 search engine provides web search and 4 search verticals:
- Forum search
- Blog search
- News search
- Yellowpages
Microsoft currently trails far behind Baidu, Google China, Yahoo China, Sogou and iAsk with less than 1% of China’s search market:
Search engine revenues generated through the 114 search engine will be shared by China’s Telecom (70%) and Microsoft (30%),
In 2007, 70% revenues will go to China’s Telecom and 30% to Microsoft.
In 2007, 50% revenues will go to China’s Telecom and 50% to Microsoft.
Microsoft will also pay China Telecom an once-off income of 21 million US dollar (unconfirmed figure). Microsoft will be tabbing into China Telecom’s customer base of 25 million broadband users and over 80 million Internet users.