Sina.com today released news that The9 (NCTY) has secretly signed an agreement with Shanghai Alliance Investment to take over 50% of the stake of MSN China for half of msn’s estimated value (200million). According to report:

“不太可能”，不少分析人士对该消息皆称“惊讶”。不过，据消息人士透露，上述交易可能牵涉微软与九城间更深层次的资本合作，“其模式或类同当年雅虎与阿里巴巴的‘雅巴组合’”。如此来看，接盘背后九城与微软可能皆有更庞大的战略阳谋。

there is a likelyhood of a similar cooperation as that of Yahoo and Alibaba. Microsoft previously released news about potential sell of back at the beginning of September due to lack of progress in recent years (since 2005) in its search and wireless strategy.

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Notable Facts:

• Baidu and Google have grown their market share at the expense of the smaller players like Yahoo! and Sogou
• Sina (with 49% share) dominates traffic to web sites for non-search purposes with Sohu & Netease following the lead
• Google Vs Baidu demographics show close correlation in age, gender and education level
• The Survey only covered Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou - all very different from general market (and future growth)
• Google’s market shares have increased in all the three cities over the last six months, with the strongest recovery in Shanghai

For more information: download a China Search Engine Report(pdf) or contact Peter Bowang Lu at iaskchina.cn

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