WeChat to strengthen search functions

WeChat plans to make its search functions more powerful, announcing the creation of a new search-engine division. WeChat is owned by tech giant Tencent, which has been a comparatively small player in search functions on the internet compared to China’s No. 1 search engine Baidu. Tencent owns a 45% in Sogou, which is able to reach the massive amount of content published daily on WeChat, an edge that Baidu and other players don’t have. Some analysts see WeChat’s move as possibly giving Sogou greater value in its hoped-for initial public offering (IPO) launch later this year. WeChat will consolidate search-related employee teams and functions within the business division, the company said in a statement to Caixin on Tuesday. WeChat has over 900 million users, and millions of pages are published each day via subscription accounts on the platform, which is largely unreachable by Baidu searches.