Interesting:

For reasons that remain somewhat unclear, the 2010 Gay Games - which were held in Cologne, Germany in July 2010 - have bizarre landed a place on Baidu’s top ten real-time search rankings. The renewed netizen interest in the event appears to be derived from fresh information that the Chinese media has uncovered concerning last year’s Chinese delegation, a group of eight open homosexuals who competed in the eighth quadrennial Gay Games in Cologne. more ›

Our favorite method of buying things online now has its own search engine, and is it just us or does it remind you of Google? As of yet, it only searches for things on Taobao, but apparently it'll include organic searches with "bid-ranked positions." The company said it created the search engine, and blocked search results to Baidu, Google and Yahoo in an attempt to eliminate fraud. Personally, we can't see how it's much different from just searching things on the regular site, but we're intrigued by the fact that it may be offered on mobile phones as well. Buying things on the go? Egads, that sounds dangerous... for our wallets. more ›

In a critical post about a new search engine awkwardly-named Cuil, the folks at popular blog TechCrunch posted a screen grab of a Cuil search for "TechCrunch" and said: "And I have no idea who that person is next to the results for our 'About' section." Why it is none other than Shanghai's biggest R.E.M. fan, Sam Flemming, head honcho of Internet Word of Mouth research and consulting firm CIC. So, that answers the "who" portion of this question ... but what about the "why"? The only thing we can think of: Cuil rightfully finds Sam a more attractive alternative to TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. more ›

Well, you might want to check out these Chinese website search plugins for your browser. Some work for IE7, too. [Source] more ›

With over 30,000 dead, another tens of thousands missing, and 200,000 injured, coupled with a broken down mobile/land line and transportation system, many people are on a frantic search for each other, and Google mobilised 100 of its employees to help create a custom search engine entirely dedicated to helping people find their friends and loved ones. Other nifty tools found on this feature-rich page include Google Maps integrated with the latest earthquake and relief information, online donation facilities, and discussion forums where people can try to get in touch with each other. more ›

Chinese reports have been saying that around May 1, Google China unveiled its Onebox search function, which allows you to find movies and movie times. If you've used Google in the US, you are probably familiar with this function, it's the thing that sits atop the regular search results, as you can see in the pictures. The main key words are the movie, the name of the theater, and the city that you live in. For the most part, this means that you have to be able to type or do some cutting and pasting in Chinese, though it seems that pinyin city names work. Another report we saw says that the Google results are somewhat limited in that the results you get are for about 25 theaters, even though there are over 160 theaters in Shanghai. Our searches for Ironman and The Forbidden Kingdom show about 25 theater results. more ›

Shanghai Securities newspaper came out with an article that claimed that they had a contact that says that tax authorities are investigating Google China for tax evasion. Moreover, they are not just looking at the company's taxes, but individual income taxes as well — including those of Lee Kai-Fu, Google's man in China, who is rumored to owe more than 5 million RMB in unpaid taxes. The report says that there is a several month grace period during which you can pay back the whole thing, but so far, we don't know if Lee or Google are in any serious trouble. Google spokesman say the whole thing is a fabrication and that they have not received any audit notifications from the tax bureau. more ›

Baidu rolled a new feature as of yesterday—a person of the month, which you can see in their logo. They say that they pick the person based on searches done in their engine, so it's a bit like Google Trends meets Time Person of the Year on a monthly basis. This month it's Xu Sanduo (许三多), a character from a popular TV series called Soldier Sortie(士兵突击), which has become one of the more popular shows... more ›