The search engine giant Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) announced on December 22 its plans to offer China's 27 million broadband subscribers the company's first service to combine mail and instant messaging. Yahoo Mail Messenger service will allow users to access instant messaging for free through their mailbox service with only one or two clicks, compared with the seven or eight previously needed, the company said. Users also can send instant messages without having to download four or five megabytes of software, the company said.
Yahoo is competing with its U.S. rival Google and local portals such as Sina and Netease.com for market share in China. In November 2003 Yahoo acquired 3721 Network Software, China's leading Chinese-keyword search engine at the time, for $120 million. Zhou Hongyi, the company's founding president, was retained as head of operations in China. This year Zhou has introduced products including (www.yisou.com), a Chinese search engine that competes with the market leader (http://Baidu.com).
