Global Marketing News – 23rd May 2016
Sogou partners with Microsoft to launch English-language search engine
Microsoft has joined forces with Chinese search engine Sogou, to launch a new English language search portal.
The move comes not long after Microsoft announced the closure of its Chinese language MSN service.
According to Sogou, the new service will allow Chinese users access to “trillions” of pieces of English language information, and will be able to automatically translate Chinese search requests to find users English results.
They also said that the aim would be to provide China with the English-language content, in order to better serve the growing demand for global information.
Whilst Sogou is a relatively lesser-known search engine around the world, the deal comes during a Chinese government investigation into the ethics of the country’s largest search engine, Baidu, which accounts for 70% of the market.
Google appeals French “right to be forgotten” ruling
Google has made an appeal to a French court, in order to get the country’s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling removed from its global sites.
Whilst the French ruling was passed by the EU in 2014 for European citizens, it can apply even when the websites themselves are not hosted within Europe.
Google has maintained that it does remove valid requests for removal, but that it does not currently remove the affected pages from its sites outside of Europe, such as Google.com; something they have been ordered to do.
The search engine has argued that the ruling should not apply outside the EU or France’s jurisdiction, as “one country should not have the right to impose its rules on the citizens of other countries.”
In an open letter printed in French newspaper Le Monde, Google suggested that it would set a dangerous precedent for “less open and democratic” countries to start imposing their laws worldwide.
JD and Tencent develop big data tool
Online retailer JD.com, is tightening its connection to Tencent, in a hope of destabilising Alibaba’s continuing dominance of e-commerce in the country.
The two companies have held a partnership since 2014, but announced this week that they’d developed a marketing and branding tool in order to share big data.
Whilst Tencent will share public accounts data gathered from its social media platform WeChat, JD.com will provide transactional data gathered from what users have bought through their online store.
JD.com said that by sharing this data, both companies would be able to target consumers, more accurately, using platforms such as WeChat.
Both companies insist however that the Chinese economic slowdown will not affect their new strategy, as their promotions will be limited to products people actually want.
Allegro dominates the Polish ecommerce landscape
Trading your own goods via an online marketplace around Europe is usually a fairly simple decision; Ebay or Amazon.
However, in Poland, with 75% of Poles placing it before either of their global counterparts, Allegro leads the marketplace.
With Amazon not even active, and Ebay playing a very minor role, Allegro is by far the go-to place for online shopping in the country.
If a foreign online retailer wishes to reach Poland, this must be done through Allegro.pl, and must be a Polish-language website.
Part of the company’s success is its early launch in 1999, from where it has continued to grow, now boasting 14 million customers and a current brand awareness in Poland of nearly 99%.
Google releases Ramadan search data
And finally, with Ramadan just around the corner for the worlds Muslim community, Google’s Indonesian office has released search patterns from last year’s festival.
The results show that searches for Ramadan related terms begins its increase up to one week before the start of the fasting period, and only returns to normal one week afterwards.
During the fasting period itself however, interest in shopping and particularly food increases.
While travel searches increase by 30% as people visit family, shopping related searches go up by a similar amount, likely due to people looking for gifts.
Terms like ‘rending’ (an Indonesian rice cake and beef curry) and ‘menu for breaking fast’ increase dramatically compared to the rest of the year, showing food is of particularly keen interest over this time.
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