Google to offer service to Chinese!

[nebbie2004]

24.06.2004 10:14:00 GMT
Exclusive: Google launches new search services for Chinese netizens

Shanghai. (Interfax-China) - Internet search giant Google.com has stepped-up its efforts on the Chinese market after becoming "a strategic investor" in China's largest search engine company Baidu.com. The company has launched several new search services on its simplified Chinese language homepage, enabling simplified Chinese language users to quickly find the information they want. Mainland China uses 'simplified Chinese characters,' as opposed to the traditional 'long form' characters used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Among these new search services, 5 are particularly for simplified Chinese language users, including weather information, post codes, stock quotes, mobile phone numbers, and a Chinese-English dictionary. Such information can be directly searched in the search box of Google.com simplified Chinese language homepage, and the results will be listed on top of the search result list.

To find the English translation for a certain Chinese word, users simply need to input "FY" or the Chinese characters "Fanyi" (which means "translate" in English) plus the Chinese word in the search box. Similarly, users can put "TQ" or the Chinese characters "Tianqi" (which means "weather" in English) plus the city or region name to find the weather information of the designated city or region. To find postal codes or stock information, they need to input Chinese characters "Youbian" ("post code" in English) + city/region, or "Gupiao" ("stocks" in English) +company name or ticker, into the search box.

According to a Shanghai-based Internet research house iResearch, Google.com currently is the second most popular search engine in China, following Baidu.com and ahead of Yahoo's 3721. An online poll shows that 69.3% of netizens use Baidu.com frequently for online searching, followed by Google.com at 62.9% and Yahoo's 3721 at 48.7%.

[Randy]

Please note that there is another article posted on this subject in the Gmail forum.

[intelliot]

I wonder, what does 3721 mean?

[Anonymous]

3721 is one of the engine for website search, and also provide some tools as google tool bar.
www.3721.com

[intelliot]

Yeah, I know that, but why the name "3721"?

[Andylkl]

Originally Posted by intelliot

Yeah, I know that, but why the name "3721"?

It's a catchy phrase in Chinese. It's actually pronouced as "san1 qi1 er4-shi2-yi1" or "three seven twenty-one"... No specific meaning really, except that 3 times 7 is 21, and that it's just plain catchy... =)

[tubaman93]

Yeah it's pretty catchy.

[imperial001]

3721? hehe thats awesome, they probably have like all the tricks with the number. like andylki said, 3x7=21, 21/7=3 and so on...