
Photo: IC Photo
Sogou’s recent conduct may have seen it branded an unfair competitor, but the Chinese search giant still reported handsome second-quarter figures Monday, posting total revenues of $303.6 million — an 8% year-over-year rise in yuan terms and a 1% increase in dollars — and a net income of $21.3 million.
Sogou is China’s second-largest search engine, but in recent years the company’s popular Chinese-language keyboard software has become another important income source. Sogou Mobile Keyboard boasted 453 million daily average users from April through June — a 17% increase from the same period a year ago — and processed up to 680 million daily voice requests.
Wang Xiaochuan, Sogou’s CEO, said the company’s search revenues were growing faster than the industry average, adding that Sogou aimed to leverage the large user bases of both the search and keyboard offerings in order to unlock the commercial value of the company’s big data and recommendation services.
Sogou has also ramped up efforts to improve AI-driven language technologies and voice recognition software, Wang said.
Sogou was fined $4.37 million in June for breaching competition regulations after it was revealed that the company unfairly directed users to its own site using suggested search pop-ups on its keyboard even when users tried to input keywords into other search engines.
Related: China’s Second-Largest Search Engine Fined $4.37 Million for ‘Unfair Competition’

