Google’s China search project gets stung by confrontation over data

Google’s Dragonfly project, an effort to bring a censored search engine to China, reportedly took a major blow after an internal confrontation over data privacy, according to a report Monday by The Intercept.

The privacy team at Google confronted executives over data gathered from 265.com, a Beijing-based website that Google bought in 2008, according to the report. The data allowed engineers to see what search queries from mainland China might look like, so Google could improve the accuracy of the search results it might provide. The data allowed the company to build a prototype search product, The Intercept said.

But access to the data was shut down after Google’s privacy team complained that it was left in the dark about the 265.com data.

Shutting down access to the data has “effectively ended” the Dragonfly project, according to The Intercept.

https://www.right2work.net/2018/12/17/googles-china-search-project-gets-stung-by-confrontation-over-data-cnet/

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Chinese search engines

https://www.baidu.com/

Baidu had a stronger quarter in Q2 2018 with search exhibiting robust revenue growth driven by AI-powered monetization capabilities and Baidu feed continuing strong traffic, according to its financial results.

Baidu released Baidu Brain v3.0, which features multi-modal deep semantic understanding to enable conversational AI in Chinese, along with a full stack of over 110 AI capabilities.

Baidu App, which offers search and personalized news feed, continues to see robust growth, reaching 148 million daily active users in June 2018, up 17% from the same period last year.

At Baidu Create, Baidu announced the launch of its smart mini program, which allows mobile apps in the form of a mini program to directly provide users with a seamless native-app experience through the Baidu App and other major apps in its network, bypassing the additional step of an app download.

Baidu upgraded its AI-powered ad monitoring system, which can now remove bad ads at a rate of up to 4,500 ads per minute.

https://www.sogou.com/

In search, Sogou differentiated services from Baidu in key verticals, such as healthcare. It also deepened its partnership with WeChat by providing more search services such as the encyclopedia and interactive Q&A platform.

Its AI-powered innovations drove broader adoption of the Sogou Mobile Keyboard, with DAU increasing by 36% year-on-year to 380 million in Q2 2018. Especially in June, Sogou Mobile Keyboard handled approximately 300 million voice inputs on average per day, up 54% year-on-year, and remained China’s largest voice mobile application.

Meanwhile, Sogou also applied its AI capabilities to enhance the competitiveness of the recently launched hardware products, such as Sogou Travel Translator and Sogou Smart Recording Translator.

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China search engine market to reach US$20 bn in 2018

here are 656.88 million search engine users in China as of June 2018, 637.4 million among which were using search engine via mobile devices. China's search engine market is expected to reach US$20 billion in 2018. And, search advertising market is expected to reach US$14 billion in 2018.

China's search advertising market totaled 85.23 billion yuan (US$12.33 bn) in 2017, a 16.5% increase year-on-year.

There are 656.88 million search engine users in China as of June 2018, 637.4 mil.

https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/tag/search-engine/