Sogou, China's second largest internet search engine, has completed its merger with technology giant, Tencent.
Tencent announced its intention to buy the search engine firm back in 2020, which was approved by Chinese authorities earlier this year.
Key Highlights
- On July 13th, Chinese authorities approved Tencent's acquisition of Sogou for $3.5 billion.
- Upon the merger, Sogou will become a subsidiary of Tencent, and will no longer be a publicly traded company.
- Most of Sogou's business units (and products) will be absorbed into Tencent, with the exception of its most popular (search engine) offerings, which will continue to operate under the "Sogou" brand.
- Prior to the merger, Sogou was a publicly listed company on NYSE.
Why It Matters
- Tencent has been Sogou’s second-largest shareholder since 2013.
- Sogou's merger with Tencent was initially supposed to complete in Q4 2020, but was delayed due to regulatory screenings.
- Sogou has predominantly been used as a search engine on top of WeChat's app, where it receives a large portion of its traffic.
- With the acquisition of Sogou, Tencent will be able to further expand on its search engine ambitions to compete with Baidu, Bing, and Google.
