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Qihoo 360, Inc. Technology Co. Ltd., is a Chinese internet security company known for its antivirus programming (360 Safeguard, 360 Mobile Safe), Web program (360 Secure Browser), and versatile application store (360 Mobile Assistant). It was established by Zhou Hongyi and Qi Xiangdong in June 2005. Qihoo 360 have 500 million users for its Internet Security products and more than 600 million users for its Mobile Antivirus product as of June 2014.
Later in 2012, Qihoo 360 dominated the search market by launching so.com, thereby directly competing with Baidu, the dominant search engine in China. A lot of unique visitors developed to 10.52%. "Sōu" (搜) in Chinese signifies "search". On July 18, 2013, Qihoo launched its new search engine leidian.com, which pointed toward expanding its quality in the mobile market. At the end of July in 2013 Qihoo was in early talks to secure Sohu.com's Sogou.com search index for around $1.4 billion. In mid 2015, Qihoo rebranded its so.com internet searcher to divert to haosou.com. "Hao" in Chinese means good; Haosou directly translated to English means "search engine".
In the mid year of 2012, Qihoo 360 dominated the smartphone market by launching the Battleship telephone along with Haier, the large Chinese consumer electronics company. Qihoo 360 said that Haier will give the equipment while Qihoo 360 will focus on customising the product, though the primary working framework will be Android. Qihoo 360 got more than 220,000 pre-orders for the phone on the first day.
In December 2013, the company expanded its stake in Brazilian Tech Company PSafe.
On July 11, 2014, the company has set up an investment (VC) store in Silicon Valley.
On December 18, 2015, Qihoo 360 said it agreed to be acquired by a group of investors in a deal valued at about $9.3 billion. On July 15, 2016, Qihoo 360 reported the conclusion of its take-private transaction.
On July 18, 2016, Qihoo 360 purchased a large portion of Opera Software for US$600 million. On 4 November 2016 Golden Brick Capital (Qihoo included) finished the acquisition.
In May 2020, Qihoo 360 was placed the Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List because of U.S. public security concerns.
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