How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
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Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#2When Google pays Apple $10B a year to be the default search engine on iOS it's "business".
But when a no-name Chinese company redirects searches to Bing suddenly its "fraud" and "search hijacking" and a "national security threat".
All this really shows is the ridiculous amount of revenue search has that such a simple scheme is making 100M+
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#3When Google pays Apple $10B a year to be the default search engine on iOS it's "business". But when a no-name Chinese company redirects searches to Bing suddenly its "fraud" and "search hijacking" and a "national security threat". All this really shows is the ridiculous amount of revenue search has that such a simple scheme is making 100M+
Yes? They're completely different scenarios. One is setting the default search engine, the other is actively subverting the user's intention.
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#4When Google pays Apple $10B a year to be the default search engine on iOS it's "business". But when a no-name Chinese company redirects searches to Bing suddenly its "fraud" and "search hijacking" and a "national security threat". All this really shows is the ridiculous amount of revenue search has that such a simple scheme is making 100M+
Yes? They're completely different scenarios. One is setting the default search engine, the other is actively subverting the user's intention.
The user’s intention is to proxy the search results so it is anonymized. Based on their chrome extension description it seems to do that. It works not unlike duckduckgo.
Spinning it as some Anti-Chinese national security thing is probably unnecessary.
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#5So 7 million users equals a revenue of $250 million. Meaning 1 user is worth $35 on an annual basis. That’s insane! No wonder Google is so huge.
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#6So 7 million users equals a revenue of $250 million. Meaning 1 user is worth $35 on an annual basis. That’s insane! No wonder Google is so huge.
Google doesn't push their shopping affiliate links as agressively.
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#7My old comment still applies.
>After seeing all those sketchy or even fraudulent mobile ads by TikTok's parent company ByteDance, I won't be surprised if that SMS is a bait.
>But pretty much everybody does it in China, Baidu etc, like "You phone has 8GB of garbage, download us to clean it", "Download us to boost your signal by 4 times immediately", "This cutie just sent you a message, download us to repsond", basically anything to make you download their apps, and only political problems go punished.
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes? They're completely different scenarios. One is setting the default search engine, the other is actively subverting the user's intention.
The user’s intention is to proxy the search results so it is anonymized. Based on their chrome extension description it seems to do that. It works not unlike duckduckgo. Spinning it as some Anti-Chinese national security thing is probably unnecessary.
I don't think they anonymize the search, they just send it directly to Bing or Google. Anonymizing the search wouldn't earn them any money.
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#9So 7 million users equals a revenue of $250 million. Meaning 1 user is worth $35 on an annual basis. That’s insane! No wonder Google is so huge.
Google doesn't push their shopping affiliate links as agressively.
Maybe not exactly in those terms, but effectively every Google ad is logically the same and even more lucrative, as google gets paid for potential purchases unlike affiliate links which only pays for actual purchases.
And if you think Google is not aggressive, search "credit card" without ad block. It is insane!
Re: How a Chinese Company Built a $250M Search Hijacking Empire
#10> Genimous Technology Co Ltd, a public company traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange under the symbol 000676, is the 12 billion CNY ($1.7 billion USD) company that is behind these extensions
If you're brave, short this. Shining a light on an edge of ethical/legal business has a good chance of making their revenue dry up fast.