The Washington Post | February 22, 2011 | Joe McDonald
BEIJING — China’s main government news agency launched an Internet search site Tuesday, giving its own sanitized view of the Web following Google’s closure of its China-based search engine last year over censorship.
The Xinhua News Agency is operating www.panguso.com in partnership with state-owned China Mobile Ltd., the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers.
The venture gives the ruling Communist Party a new tool to try to control what China’s public sees online. Industry analysts say it might be commercially viable, drawing on Xinhua’s news report and China Mobile’s vast subscriber base, but is unlikely to challenge local industry leader Baidu Inc., which has more than 75 percent of China’s search market.
Xinhua and China Mobile announced the venture in August after Google Inc. closed its China-based search engine, saying it no longer wanted to comply with Chinese censorship and complaining its e-mail service was hacked from China.
Xinhua said it hopes to make Panguso one of China’s leading search engines.
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