Lei Jianping reported on October 1
Sogou officially completed its privatization today and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. From listing to delisting, Sogou has experienced nearly 4 years, and Sogou has also invested in tencent from Sohu.
On September 4, 2021, Sogou announced the completion of a merger with Tencent. After the completion of the merger, Sogou will become an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent Holdings.
After Sogou is delisted, its original search, AI, input method and other services and browsers, reading and other products will be in line with PCG's similar products, and the team will be integrated. After Sogou integrates into Tencent's system, Sogou search, input method, PC browser and other products will continue to maintain Sogou brand operation.
Sogou is an enterprise that has been privatized by Tencent in the last year after EasyCar.
After the sale of Sogou, Sohu also received about $1.18 billion in total cash consideration and no longer holds any ownership interest in Sogou.
Sogou is not easy to operate independently: it has passed a few hurdles
For the Chinese Internet, Sogou is a veteran, which was established as early as 2003 and was not officially launched until August 2004. At that time, the purpose of Sohu's launch of Sogou was to enhance Sohu's search skills, mainly operating Sohu's search business.
One of the nodes in Sogou's growth process is: in 2010, Google announced its withdrawal from China. At this time, Baidu is in the sky, 360 has done a battle with Tencent, the momentum is fierce, Zhou Hongyi is preparing to cut into the search field, Zhou Hongyi found Zhang Chaoyang and wants to invest in Sogou.
At the same time, Zhou Hongyi proposed to Zhang Chaoyang to transfer the Sogou browser business to 360, and at the same time, 360 and Sohu set up a joint venture company to specialize in search. However, Wang Xiaochuan flew to Hangzhou alone to meet Alibaba founder Jack Ma, prompting Ali as a strategic investor and Yunfeng Fund as a financial investor to join forces with Sogou.
A few years later, Sogou came to a crossroads again and faced a 360 acquisition, only this time, Wang Xiaochuan pulled Incent CEO Ma Huateng.
In September 2013, Tencent announced that it would invest US$448 million in Sogou to merge Sogou and QQ input method businesses with Sogou's existing business to form a new Sogou company.
On November 9, 2017, after years of struggle, Sogou was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and the market value of Sogou exceeded $5 billion on the day of listing at the issue price.
By the time Sogou privatized and delisted, the overall price was $3.5 billion. From the listing to the delisting now, Sogou has experienced nearly 4 years, from the original Tencent into the shares, to Sogou merged into Tencent, another 8 years.
Wang Xiaochuan once said that Sogou was injected into assets (Tencent Search, input method business), and now, Sogou is used as an asset to inject back into Tencent. In this way, Wang Xiaochuan and his team have experienced a reincarnation.
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