Yahoo! in China: Local Problems for the Global Internet Giant

Unwanted Pop-Ups

Yahoo! China was often accused of promoting unwanted pop-ups, which irritated the browsers. Yahoo! China's erstwhile General Manager, Zhou Hongyi (Zhou) accused it of spreading malware, a software that installed itself without permission. When Yahoo! China bought Zhou's search engine in 2003, Zhou was made the general manager. He later shifted to Qihoo.com (Qihoo) in August 2005.³⁴ Zhou accused Yahoo! of knowingly distributing its toolbar and getting users to visit sites through pop-up windows. His company, Qihoo, started distributing an anti-spyware program that identified Yahoo! China's toolbar as malware and removed it from computers...

Ma himself opined that that Yahoo! China would have to leverage on its understanding of the Chinese consumers and chart its own path in the online search market. "If you follow Google's way, you will always be a follower…We have to make the Yahoo search engine more human, more interactive ... something for the 1.3 billion people in China who aren't technology-oriented, who don't know how to ask the right questions to a search engine - for people who are like me,"Ma said describing Yahoo! China's future course of action.⁵⁰ Industry experts felt that by positioning itself in the high end segment, Yahoo! China would be on a different platform when compared to Baidu. But it would have to compete with Google, a dominant player in that segment...