WebProNews

Coming on the heels of Google's investment in Chinese search presence, Baidu.com, Yahoo has announced the release of their search website Yisou.com. The name of the search engine translates to "No1 Search" and unlike Yahoo's Chinese portal, Yisou will concentrate only on web based searches.

David Lu, vice-president of Yahoo Asia, said in a telephone interview with Reuters, "we want to be the number one search engine in China, that's our goal. Yisou, developed based on requests for a clean user interface, will help extend our reach into the rapidly growing search market in China."

Currently, China has over 80 million internet users. Yisou's launch will be the third Yahoo-owned search available. Not only will they have Yahoo's search enabled portal and Yisou - last year, Yahoo invested in 3721.com, another Chinese-based search engine.

This move indicates that the China has become a fertile area for the continuing search engine competition. With Google's investment and Yahoo's launch, each major continent will now see the two search giants squaring off against each other.

Which is kind of odd, what with both of them apparently going up for auction tomorrow on eBay. :)

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.