Qihoo 360

Qihoo 360
Private
Industry Internet Security
Founded Beijing, China, 2005 (2005)
Founder Zhou Hongyi (Chairman, CEO, co-founder), Qi Xiangdong(President, director, co-founder)
Headquarters Beijing, China
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Zhou Hongyi, Qi Xiangdong, Cao Shu (Chief Engineer & Director), Xu Zuoli Alex (Co-CFO), Yao Jue (Co-CFO)
Products Antivirus software, Web Browser, Mobile Antivirus Software, and Mobile Application Store
Revenue $1.39 billion (2014)[1]
Profit $222.8 million (2014)[1]
Number of employees
 4,200
Website www.360.com

Qihoo 360 (Chinese: 奇虎 360; pinyin: Qíhǔ Sānliùlíng; approximate pronunciation CHEE-hoo), full name Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., is a Chinese internet security company known for its antivirus software (360 Safeguard, 360 Mobile Safe), Web Browser (360 Browsers), and Mobile Application Store (360 Mobile Assistant). It was founded by Zhou Hongyi and Qi Xiangdong in June 2005.[2][3] Qihoo 360 had 496 million users for its Internet Security products and 641 million users for its Mobile Antivirus products as of June 2014.[4]

The company's head office is in Chaoyang District, Beijing.[5]

Business Model

Qihoo 360 initiated its business operations by selling third-party antivirus software online. Soon afterwards they realized the potential of the freemium business model in the Chinese market and started providing their own antivirus products free of charge. In a short period of time, Qihoo 360's security products gained popularity and market share in China. Their current revenues are generated by leveraging their massive user base through online advertising and services such as online games, remote technical support, and system integration.

Products

Financials

Qihoo 360's main revenue sources include advertising space on 360 Startup Page, as well as revenue sharing with independent games developers which have published their games on the 360 Mobile Assistant. The revenue breakdown in 2012 was split between the revenue streams as follows: 67% from advertising, 31% from internet value added services and less than 1% from selling third party software. The revenues increased by 96.0% from $167.9 million in 2011 to $329.0 million in 2012. As of January 2014, the market cap is $11.42B.[7]

History

In the summer of 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the smartphone market by launching the Battleship phone together with Haier, the large Chinese consumer electronics company.[8] Qihoo 360 said that Haier will provide the hardware while Qihoo 360 will focus on customising the software, albeit the main operating system will be Android. Qihoo 360 received over 220,000 pre-orders for the phone the first day.[9]

Later in 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the search market by launching so.com, thereby directly competing with Baidu, the dominant search engine in China. Qihoo has seen its share of unique visitors quickly grow to 10.52%.[10] "Sōu" (搜) in Chinese means "search".

Most recently, Qihoo 360 has struck deals with major technology companies Google and Nokia for search and mobile phone partnerships, respectively.

On July 18, 2013, Qihoo launched its new search engine leidian.com, which aimed at increasing its presence in the mobile market.[11]

The firm announced at the end of July in 2013 that it was in early talks to acquire Sohu.com’s Sogou.com search engine for around $1.4 billion.[12]

In 2013, the company announced they would like to expand into overseas market with English, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, German, French and Korean languages support. Currently they are recruiting languages talents to develop this kind of software.

December 2013, the company increases stake in Brazilian Tech Company PSafe.[13][14]

On July 11, 2014, the company has set up a venture capital (VC) fund in Silicon Valley.[15]

In early 2015, Qihoo rebranded its so.com search engine to redirect to haosou.com. "Hao" in Chinese means good; Haosou directly translated to English means "good search engine".[16]

On December 18, 2015, Qihoo 360 said it agreed to be acquired by a group of investors in a deal valued at about $9.3 billion.[17] On July 15, 2016, Qihoo 360 announced the finalization of its take-private transaction.[18]

On July 18, 2016, Qihoo 360 bought most of Opera Software for 600 million USD.[19] On 4 November 2016 Golden Brick Capital (Qihoo included) completed the acquisition.[20]

Controversies

Qihoo has been described by Forbes as a confrontational and litigious company due to its involvement in various anti-competition lawsuits.[21]

The company was involved in lawsuits with Tencent,[21][22] starting with the 360 v. Tencent dispute, as well as other companies such as Baidu,[23] Emiage,[24] Sogou.[25]

The company has been accused by Anonymous of overstating the volume of traffic to its site in order to attract advertisers.[26]

The antivirus testing companies, AV-Comparatives of Austria, Germany's AV-Test and Virus Bulletin of the UK have accused Qihoo of providing for testing its anti-virus equipped with a Bitdefender engine, while the consumer version uses Qihoo's own QVM engine.[27][28]

According to documents released by Mozilla Corporation, Qihoo appears to have acquired a controlling interest in the previously Israeli-run Certificate Authority "StartCom", through a chain of acquisitions, including the chinese-owned company WoSign. WoSign also has a CA business; WoSign has been accused of poor control and misissuing certificates. Furthermore, Mozilla alleges that WoSign and StartCom are in violation of their obligations as Certificate Authorities in respect of their failure to disclose the change in ownership of StartCom; Mozilla is threatening to take action, to protect their users.[29]

References

  1. 1 2 "2014 Annual Report". Qihoo. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  2. ↑ "Management overview".
  3. ↑ "CEO profile".
  4. ↑ "2012 Annual Report". Qihoo. Retrieved 1 June 2013.
  5. ↑ "Contact Us." Qihoo 360. Retrieved on May 11, 2016. "Address :Building #2, No. 6 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015, China"
  6. ↑ "360 Total Security official web site".
  7. ↑ Quote from NASDAQ.com
  8. ↑ "Qihoo 360 Launches Battleship Phone".
  9. ↑ "220,000 pre-order of the Battleship phone".
  10. ↑ "Qihoo market share".
  11. ↑ Hsu, Alex (18 Jul 2013). "Qihoo Launches New Search Engine Targeting Mobile Users". BrightWire News.
  12. ↑ Reuters (19 July 2013). "Deals of the day -- mergers and acquisitions". Reuters.
  13. ↑ "New York Times Dealbook: Qihoo Chinese Firm Increases Stake in Brazilian Tech Company". http://dealbook.nytimes.com. Retrieved 11 December 2014. External link in |website= (help)
  14. ↑ "PSafe Official Website". http://www.psafe.com. Retrieved 11 December 2014. External link in |website= (help)
  15. ↑ Lizette Chapman (19 July 2013). "360 Joins Asian Companies Launching VC Groups in Silicon Valley". Wall Street Journal.
  16. ↑ Qihoo 360 Re-brands Its Search Engine So.com To Haosou.com Retrieved March 21, 2016.
  17. ↑ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-qihoo-360-m-a-idUSKBN0U118720151218
  18. ↑ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qihoo-360-announces-completion-of-merger-300299435.html
  19. ↑ https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/18/opera-renegotiates-its-1-2b-sale-down-to-600m-for-browser-privacy-apps-chinese-jv/
  20. ↑ "Successful closing of the Transaction". Newsweb.
  21. 1 2 Custer, Charles (24 Feb 2014). "Qihoo 360 Loses In Court Again". Forbes Asia.
  22. ↑ Kan, Michael (22 Nov 2010). "Chinese Internet Firms Forced to Apologize Over Privacy Spat". PCWorld.
  23. ↑ Custer, Charles (5 Sep 2013). "Baidu sues Qihoo 360 for unfair competiton, [sic] asks for $100k in compensation". Tech in Asia.
  24. ↑ Custer, Charles (18 Oct 2014). "Oh, the irony: days after losing its own monopoly abuse suit, Qihoo is getting sued for monopoly abuse". Tech in Asia.
  25. ↑ Custer, Charles (20 Jan 2015). "Qihoo 360 loses again in China's courts, ordered to pay Sogou $8.2 million for unfair competition". Tech in Asia.
  26. ↑ Muncaster, Phil (3 Jul 2012). "China's internet wunderkind in the dock over alleged fraud". The Register.
  27. ↑ Wan, Adrian (5 May 2015). "Qihoo cuts ties with three antivirus testing firms in software dispute". South China Morning Post.
  28. ↑ Keizer, Gregg (1 May 2015). "Antivirus test labs call out Chinese security company as cheat". Computerworld.
  29. ↑ "WoSign and StartCom". Google Docs. Mozilla Corp. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
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