NetEase Website is First Chinese Portal to Integrate Google’s Chinese Language Search and WebSearch into its Content Channel Network
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and BEIJING, China – August 29, 2000 – Google, developer of the award-winning Google search engine, and NetEase, (NASDAQ: NTES) China’s leading Internet technology company, today announced that NetEase has selected Google as its premier Chinese language-specific search engine and default web search results provider. Under the agreement, Google will provide its Chinese language-specific search and underlying global web search engine to complement NetEase’s web directory and content channel network found at www.163.com. NetEase expects to unveil its next generation web directory and integrate the Google services within the next 15 days. NetEase provides Chinese language services centered around Internet content, community, and e-commerce.
"Our popular web directory and content channels provide an essential set of services to millions of Chinese speaking users who use NetEase each day for email, auctions, news, chat and search," said King F. Lai, CEO of NetEase. "NetEase selected Google because it shares our strong focus on quality." Google’s Chinese language search represents one of the largest collections of Asian websites on the Internet, and is a key part of Google’s strategy to expand its reach to new international markets. As part of the agreement, NetEase visitors have the ability to access a searchable index of more than 24 million Chinese language web pages. In addition, NetEase visitors will also have access to the world’s largest searchable index, which includes more than 1 billion web documents. Google’s Chinese search enables NetEase site visitors to restrict their search to web pages in both simplified and traditional Chinese languages.
"No matter what language our users speak, Google helps individuals find the information they are looking for on the web with unprecedented levels of ease, speed, and relevancy," said Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of Google. "Through our licensing relationship with NetEase, more than 5.9 million Chinese speaking NetEase members will now benefit from the accurate and rapid return of Google search results."
Currently, google.com users can search for content in 14 different languages, including Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The company is aggressively building additional search services, and will soon launch Japanese, Korean and other customized versions of its search engine.
"NetEase is focused on meeting the needs of Chinese users by providing them with high-quality and relevant search results," said Jack L. Xu, Co-CTO and vice president of NetEase. "Google’s ability to scale with the rapid growth of the web, makes it a particularly good match for NetEase users. We are very pleased by this agreement."
"We’re thrilled that NetEase has selected Google to complement its new web directory and content channels," said Omid Kordestani, Google vice president of Business Development and Sales. "This is a significant international milestone for Google and a strong validation of our global business strategy."
Designed for Internet users worldwide, Google’s search engine offers web surfers simple, fast, and highly relevant search results for every web-connected computer. The key features of Google’s search engine include its ease of use and clean interface, and highly relevant results. Google is based on a variety of innovative technologies, including sophisticated text matching and its advanced, patent-pending technology called PageRank, which ensures that the most important results always come up first. This scalable approach to search enables Google to get better as the Internet gets bigger.
Google was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to provide highly relevant search results. Launched as a beta site in September 1998, Google went live as a commercial website a year later. Since its debut, the search engine has developed a rapidly growing base of loyal users worldwide. Today, international users make up approximately half of the Google user community.
About Google Inc.
Google exists to provide the world’s best Internet search experience. Google accomplishes this for millions of users daily by delivering a powerful, fast, and easy way to find the most relevant information available. Google’s technological innovations have powered the company to numerous awards, including a 2000 Webby and People’s Voice Award For Best Technical Achievement; Best Search Engine on the Internet from Yahoo! Internet Life; Top Ten Best Cybertech of 1999 by TIME magazine; Technical Excellence Award from PC Magazine; and Best Search Engine by The Net.
Google powers over 80 portal and destination sites worldwide, including international customers in more than 20 countries: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela. A growing number of companies, including Yahoo!, Netscape’s Netcenter, a subsidiary of AOL, Virgin.net and Virgilio, rely on Google to power search on their websites. A privately held company based in Mountain View, Calif., Google’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. For the information you need, visit www.google.com.
About NetEase
Netease.com, Inc. is a leading China-based Internet technology company and pioneered the development of applications, services and other technologies for the Internet in China. The Company had over 5.9 million registered members, and 24 million of average daily page views at the end of June 2000. The NetEase Web sites, operated by our affiliate, organize and provide access to 18 separate channels of online content through content distribution arrangements with over 150 international and domestic content providers. In addition, the NetEase Web sites contain over 465,000 personal home pages created and maintained by our users that enable users to express themselves, to share ideas, interests and areas of expertise and to publish personal content accessible by other Chinese Internet users.
The NetEase Web sites also offer online interactive community services through 200 community forums and over 22,000 personal community forums created by registered users. At the end of June 2000, the number of simultaneous chat room participants reached 34,000 during peak hours. NetEase offers a business-to-consumer auction service on the NetEase Web sites featuring a wide range of products. In June 2000, the Company launched online retailing services, offering opportunities for e-commerce vendors and traditional business customers to establish online e-commerce.
Google Contact:
Kimberly Vogel
(650) 930-3533
kimberly@google.com
###
Google is a trademark of Google, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.