Alibaba and Sohu Team Up and Take It To Google

Google has lost momentum in this last year, and local search engines are soaking up all that lost traffic. Baidu are still top dog for search, but a partnership between Sohu and Alibaba announced this week is likely to stir things up.

Sohu launched it's Sogou.com search engine in 2004, is the 4th most visited search engine in China and have started to work closely with video sharing sites such as Youku to offer videro search. They also own Sogou MP3 a large online library of music available for free streaming or download. Alibaba is one of the biggest online advertisers in China is owned in part by Yahoo, run’s Yahoo China and own’s Taobao (like an awesome Ebay).
Between them they have the makings of their very own Internet empire very similar to that of Google’s with search, video sharing, music, online shopping and advertising all under one umbrella plus the added bonus of being able to make use of Yahoo's Internet technology.

It will be interesting to see how Google who have just had their ISP renewed and Baidu react to this new partnership.