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August 20, 2007

Google Takes Stake In Tianya.cn

Duncan Riley

26 comments »

googlecn1.pngGoogle has acquired a stake in Chinese social portal Tianya.cn.

Tianya.cn offers a variety of services including user blogs, classifieds, photo hosting, news, sports news and University information. The site is ranked as the 63rd most popular website in China according to Alexa.

As reported August 17, Google stated its intention to acquire 1 or 2 China focused internet companies and invest in 5 over the next 12 months. The investment in Tianya.cn would appear to be the first of those 5 investments. The percentage of Tianya acquired by Google, or the price of the purchase was not disclosed, although it is believed the stake could be as high as 60%

(via Reuters)

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 7:05 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Qiang

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:22 am

    I like Tianya.cn

  2. Deals and Coupons

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:26 am

    too bad i can’t read chinese. :(

    may be i should make a business in creating and selling chinese domain names?

  3. Pranjal

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:37 am

    I wonder when they will come to our bathrooms. :))

  4. Chris Przybycien

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:45 am

    If Tianya is the first investement then what would that make the Baidu investment?

  5. anuj

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:54 am

    Great so like most media is owned and controlled by a few big media majors most websites will be owned by few big companies.

  6. Deelip

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:06 am

    Sounds like Google is buy the whole internet world.
    I would love if they buy some in my country too. In Nepal I mean.

  7. David Litsky

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:13 am

    I hope that google can sustain its growth

  8. Jay Neely

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:30 am

    Why is Techcrunch continuing to use Alexa rankings in your posts? It’s been covered time and time again that they’re horribly skewed. Please, stop reporting them as if they have any kind of objective meaning.

  9. Sherie

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:30 am

    I think that Google needs to slow their role with buying so. much….

  10. Dia Hua

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:57 am

    Actually Tianya is a forum service provider, other features are not so successful.

  11. Dominic

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:12 am

    Google just keeps on buying and throwing shit on the wall hoping something may stick. Their parade can’t and won’t las much longer. I detest their Do No Evil bullshit.

  12. Google Tycoon

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:18 am

    Like old cartoon….

    Pinky:
    “Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”

    The Brain:
    “The same thing we do every night, Pinky - Try to take over the world!”

    Why do Google need to take over the world?

    They can make lot of money. It’s like railroad tycoon. All they want is conquest. So, companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.. can’t conquear the world.

  13. The Buxr Widget

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:31 am

    Last time I checked there wasn’t a single company that is ignoring China - Google is buying because they can.. and they should.

  14. Pranjal

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:47 am

    Actually they are becoming the next greedy Microsoft. You can see the developments…………. they are jumping into things they don’t have any ideas and nothing relates to them…. Whats that google phone for. You are a internet company why should you need to go and make another crap ass mobile when their are tons of tons same shit. Really pathetic!

  15. rajaram

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:51 am

    This will help Google to fight for its share in Q&A against Yahoo!.

  16. Eric Xu

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:52 am

    This sounds like a great move by google. Most u.s. blog sites are blocked by the chinese government, including google acquired blogspot. Tianya’s forum is probably the most traffic’d forum in china.

  17. rajaram

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:57 am

    look at this post on similar topic:
    http://tech.irajaram.com/gener.....-in-china/

  18. Rajesh Shakya

    August 20th, 2007 at 11:51 am

    Google’s business is fully based on online traffic. Internet craze has been increased a lot among teenagers in China in past few years. Google’s hand on China market is on time.

    Rajesh Shakya
    http://www.rajeshshakya.com
    Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life!

  19. vincent

    August 20th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    tianya.cn is very popular in high-educated users and famous for original ideas and posts.

  20. Richard Li

    August 20th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    This makes no sense. Out of all the great and rising stars of SNS in China, why Tianya.cn ? They have dropped dramitcally in the market, are the lowest they have been since their launch, and if Google aims to capture firm stakes in SNS in China, than why not invest in the leaders 51.com, WangYou.com, 360Quan.com ? This investment makes no sense, unless Seqoua the orginal invester in Tianya and orginal backer of Google, gave Google the site at a really cheap price as its fallen out of the Top 10 ranks of SNS in China. If I had the deep pockets of Google than why not buy a stake in 51.com, WangYou.com or 360Quan.com ?

  21. Duncan Riley

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:53 pm

    Jay (comment 8)
    find me a replacement to Alexa and I’ll use it :-) I respect that Alexa figures a flawed, but unlike the boss I also know that every single set of figures available out there that aren’t server logs are just as flawed as well. At least Alexa is free and immediate.

  22. Jay Neely

    August 21st, 2007 at 7:45 am

    Thanks for replying Duncan. For Chinese sites, I’m not sure what the better option may be, and that might be something for TechCrunch to investigate, if there is a Chinese company doing traffic rankings. For U.S. sites, I believe Compete.com has a much better margin of error than Alexa. They combine their stats from several different sources, check out the FAQ: http://www.compete.com/help#snp1

    It’s still imperfect, but it’s better than Alexa. At least it doesn’t say YouTube gets more traffic than Google. :-P

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