Get ready for another huge upheaval in China's search market: China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has launched Aliyun, or Alibaba Cloud Search.
Though the new search engine offers four seemingly simple searches -- across web, news, images, and maps -- Fool contributor Kevin Chen discusses three reasons why this move should frighten investors in Google (GOOGL 1.27%), Baidu (BIDU 1.02%), and Qihoo (QIHU.DL).
- First, Alibaba has a long history of dabbling in search. Since Yahoo!'s investment into China's e-commerce giant, Alibaba has managed the search function on Yahoo!'s China website.
- Second, Alibaba owns 40% of the e-commerce market (for comparison Dangdang owns just 1.6%) and has used its market share to help shut down Google Shopping, Google's search engine for products.
- Third, new CEO Jonathan Lu seems like he will make mobile -- including mobile search -- a big priority for Alibaba.
Putting the pieces together, Alibaba seems like it can and will do anything to make sure its new search engine crushes Google, Baidu, and Qihoo. To learn more about Alibaba's new venture, click on the video now.
