Mergers and Acquisitions in China

The internet market is still growing at a very fast pace in China and it’s already the time for mergers and acquisitions here! We have learnt, few days ago, that the leading Chinese search engine Baidu was planning to acquire the second search engine Sogou earlier this year but failed to finalize the deal.

Sogou, a Not So Small Competitor

Sogou, the search engine owned by the web portal Sohu, is still a small player in the search engine field in China compare to the giant Baidu but it has been reported by Infodesk that Sogou would be considered the second player just in front of Google. In a very fragmented search engine market, where more than eight local and international platforms are competing, it comes with no surprise that some players want to gain time by choosing to grow externally and remove potential threats by acquiring some competitors.

Internet in China: A Now Mature Market

Earlier in March this year, the two video sharing platforms Youku and Toudu had announced their merge into one bigger company called Youku Toudu Inc. Currently Youku’s market share is about 25% while Toudu is about 14%, the deal is about US$ 1 Billion and will create the first video sharing platform in China with around 40% of the market share.

With all the acquisitions going on during the past months, it is very likely that the internet market in China is going to concentrate within the next months.