For Online Giants, All the Web's a Stage

When Tencent Holdings signed a contract with novelist and Nobel laureate Mo Yan in 2013, the Internet and messaging services provider raised the stakes in a race to dominate China's online entertainment market.

But the stakes had been raised many times before Mo, the 2012 Nobel in literature winner, agreed to cooperate with Tencent's entertainment content initiative. And today's three-way competition between Tencent, search engine Baidu Inc. and e-commerce leader Alibaba Group shows no signs of slowing.