Shenma

Shenma Inc.
Type of site	Private
Founded	April 2014; 10 years ago (2014-04)
Headquarters	Beijing, China
Owner	Alibaba Group and UCWeb
Key people	Liang Jie, President
Industry	Internet
URL	sm.cn

Shenma Inc. (Chinese: 神马搜索; pinyin: Shénmǎ Sōusuǒ; lit. 'god horse search') is a "mobile-first" search engine for China that was launched in April 2014.^[1]^[2] It is a joint venture between Alibaba Group and UCWeb.^[3]^[4] 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. Shenma comes with UC Browser, a mobile browser with an estimated 20% share of China's browser market and over 30% of China's mobile browser marketshare.^[5] Shenma search was co-founded as a mobile search engine by UCWeb and Alibaba in 2013. In 2014, Alibaba acquired UCWeb.^[6]

Litigation

On April 13, 2020, Shenma filed a lawsuit against Sogou 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.^[7] Shenma was seeking RMB 102 million (around $16 million in American dollars) in compensation.^[8]

On June 27, 2019, the Beijing Haidian Court ruled that the Sogou search company was guilty of hijacking UC browser and Shenma search traffic through candidate words, constituted unfair competition. They were sentenced to pay a fine of 20 million yuan.^[9]^[10]

References

^ Alibaba, UCWeb Team Up In Mobile Search Archived 2017-09-08 at the Wayback Machine, Forbes, April 28, 2014
^ Clover, Charles (2014-04-28). "Alibaba launches mobile-first search engine". Financial Times. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
^ Alibaba, UCWeb plan mobile-search joint venture Archived 2018-02-01 at the Wayback Machine, MarketWatch, Apr 28, 2014
^ Alibaba, UCWeb Team Up In Mobile Search Archived 2017-09-08 at the Wayback Machine, Forbes magazine, Apr 28. 2014
^ "What is Shenma Search? China's Lesser-known Mobile Chinese Search Engine". Nanjing Marketing Group. 2018-01-23. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
^ "Alibaba Shenma Search Engine Insights – China Internet Watch". www.chinainternetwatch.com. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
^ "Shenma v. Sogou hijacking traffic case sentenced to judge Sogou compensation 20 million yuan_China IT News". www.firstxw.com. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
^ "China's top mobile search engines Shenma and Sogou in $17M lawsuit for traffic hijacking". TechNode. 2018-04-13. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
^ "Shenma v. Sogou hijacking traffic case sentenced to judge Sogou compensation 20 million yuan_China IT News". www.firstxw.com. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
^ "Court Orders Sogou to Recompense Baidu, Others for Hijacking Search Engine Traffic". www.yicaiglobal.com. Retrieved 2020-08-06.