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Tencent threatens its users with an ultimatum

Posted by Alice Xin Liu on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 6:40 PM

Chongqing Morning Post

Chongqing Business Post

New Life Post

Xiamen Business News

On October 29, New Express reported (Danwei translated):

Chinese malware remover provider 360 had been in feud with other Internet juggernauts including Tencent, Baidu and Kingsoft. Their war was escalated when 360 singled out Tencent and accused it of secretly spying on competitors through its QQ, the most popular instant messenger application among Mainland internet users.

Last night, the war escalated as Tencent declared that its users － all 600 million － cannot use 360 if they want to use the messaging service, QQ. A selection of media has reported on this on their front page, showing the two giants sacrificing their users for largely what is a corporate fight. Tencent's PR said that the move "could not be helped" and there was a lengthy press conference covering their decision.

Circulating on Sina microblogs today was a picture of PR rep Liu Chang (刘畅) who shed tears during a press conference as she said that the decision took all night and that Tencent workers hadn't slept at all.

Links and Sources

Sina.com (Chinese): A record of the Tencent press conference
ESWN: 360 Is Hackerware
ChinaHush: 360 vs QQ, Internet security company picks fight with China’s NO. 1 software giant
WSJ Real Time blog: QQ-360 Battle Escalates into War
Earlier on Danwei: China's Internet gorillas fight

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There are currently 2 Comments for Tencent threatens its users with an ultimatum.

Comments on Tencent threatens its users with an ultimatum

eh, "all 6 billion" ? surely a mis-translation of 6亿 right?

Posted by: w1re | November 4, 2010 11:26 PM

it should be 600 million right? as in 六亿, 6 billion would be pure madness.

Posted by: doc | November 5, 2010 11:14 AM

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