China’s net users to grow 30% to 134 million by end of 2005.

This is according to research firm Analysis International. The firm pegs China’s Internet users at 103 million at the end of 2004 versus 94 million estimated by the China Internet Network Information Center. The CINIC has been the most widely followed source for Chinese Internet usage trends. Nonetheless, the forecast will solidify China’s position as the second most populous Internet nation. No wonder why eBay, Amazon, IAC/InterActiveCorp, Google, and Yahoo!, in addition to other major offline U.S. companies are racing to gain a foothold in this market. All prudent moves in my view as long as structural and payment issues subside in the coming years. Plus remember that the Chinese government has full authority to close any firm it thinks violates Chinese policies and standards, especially companies that control mediums – hint, hint, Yahoo and Google.

Amazon.com (AMZN) Extends Web Services to Canada and France

Web developers can now develop applications for all of Amazon’s six worldwide branded sites.

Baazee to be fully integrated into the eBay (EBAY) Platform by June

Avnish Bajaj, co-CEO of Baazee.com stated that he expects Baazee to be integrated into eBay by the end of the second quarter [http://www.zdnetindia.com].

Integration into eBay exposes Indian sellers to more buyers, allowing for increased trading velocity. At eBay’s most recent analyst day, Meg Whitman stated that India is not a priority at the moment as is the case with eBay EachNet in China. She gave the impression that no significant capex would be outlayed for operations in India.

Yahoo! (YHOO) Expands Image Search Index with 1.5 Billion Images

Yahoo! also added new features such as transformed queries. See the full article here:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=1332

MSN Expands Image Search with PicSearch

MSN beefs up its sub-par image search feature with PicSearch’s image database.

MSN Search is catching up with Yahoo! and Google one step (search vertical) at a time.

Daum to Buy Online Auctioneer Onket

Daum communications corp., S. Korea’s second largest Internet portal said Thursday that it plans to acquire online auctioneer Onket for 4.25B won ($US4.2M) in an apparent move to become more competitive with eBay’s Internet Auction which has 10M users in a market with 36M Internet users. Daum will acquire a 90% stake in Onket from Inicis.

FindWhat (FWHT)? Finds a disappointment for Q1 and FY2005

Search firm FindWhat.com (ticker: FWHT) announced Q4 results that matched the consensus EPS estimate but missed the consensus revenue estimate. FWHT also provided guidance below consensus revenue and earnings estimates for 2005. The stock got swiped by 23% in subsequent trading. Details and comments:

Q4 Results (all percentage changes and comparisons are year on year, unless stated otherwise)

• Revenue up 179% to $59 million (including acquisitions), versus consensus of $63 million.
• Organic revenue growth was 14%.
• FWHT claimed that it eliminated traffic that would have generated over $70,000 of pay-per-click revenue per day due to its low quality. The company is positioning itself as a guarantor of traffic quality to merchants.
• Paid click-throughs were 251 million, up 12% from 224 million in Q3.
• Espotting, the European contextual advertising business that FindWhat acquired in July '04, contributed $29 million of revenu, up only $1 million from Q3.
• Espotting EBITDA margin was 14.5%.
• EBITDA of $11.5 million up 94%.
• GAAP-basis EPS was $0.16 excluding charges and tax benefit, in-line with consensus of $0.16.
• Balance sheet: cash and equivalents at end-quarter were $54 million.

Q1 Guidance

• Revenue of $55 - $59 million versus consensus of $63 million.
• GAAP-basis EPS $0.08 - $0.11 versus consensus of $0.20.
• EBITDA of $8 - $10 million.

Full Year 2005 Guidance

• Revenue of $250 - $270 million, versus current consensus of $277 million.
• GAAP-basis EPS of $0.53 - $0.69 (mid-point $0.61) versus consensus of $0.81.
• EBITDA of $45 - $54 million.

BlowSearch Hires Kanoodle Exec.

Metasearch engine BowSearch (www.blowsearch.com) hired a former Kanoodle business development executive, Joseph Holcomb, to help grow their business. In his role at Kanoodle, he established a network of over 700 B2B referral partnerships, which supplied thousands of advertisers to Kanoodle, according to press reports.

Here is a description of this upcoming search engine from their wesbite:

BlowSearch has been a concept that has started back in 1999 to only recently be realized. Our mission is to offer you a one-stop location for your entire search needs. No longer will you need to research several search engines. Simply use our engine, and let us pull data from some of the top search engines across the Internet and provide you with a simple and concise report with all of your results. When you click on one of the results we open a new window for you to maintain your report so that if the first one you clicked on was not correct you can close that window and select another result quickly without wasting any time. We will consistently add more features and data to our engine to help improve results. We have purposefully kept the graphics small on our site so that the page loads fast; after all, you want data, not graphics.

We consider ourselves a "Super-Meta PPC" search engine. Other meta engines only pull from four or five engines due to programming limitations. Simply put, the more engines you pull from, the longer it takes. Through our extensive infrastructure and technology, we are able to pull from many engines simultaneously, infact we currently pull from around 20 engines and offer a blended result based on relevancy giving our visitors the best results the internet has to offer.

We hope you enjoy our engine, if you have any suggestions, please email our Webmaster at webmaster@blowsearch.com

Yahoo! Japan Releases Japanese Movie Service

Yahoo! Japan, through a partnership with Sony music label, Label Gate, launched a music download service. The service is expected to cost between $0.79 and $1.84.Success of this service may encourage Yahoo! in the U.S. to do the same.

Q404 Online Retail Sales Totaled $18.4B, per DOC

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced that estimated online retail sales totaled $18.4B in the fourth quarter of 2004. Note that their figure does not include auction and ticket sales. Total retail sales was estimated at $938.5B for the quarter, suggesting a 2% online retail sales penetration rate. These figures were adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences. Full year 2004 online retail sales were estimated at $69.2B, up 23.5% YoY, an accounting for 1.9% of total 2004 retail sales.

Shopping. Com Amends Agreement with Google

One of Shopping.com’s (SHOP) units amended its advertising services agreement with Google (GOOG), extending the pact to 5/1/2006. The new agreement eliminated the minimum number of clicks and click-throughs that Shopping.com had to deliver and also eliminated the minimum payment that Google had to make under the agreement. The unit accounted for 10% of Shopping.com’s 2004 revenue. Google represented about 42% of Shopping.com’s 2004 revenue, up from 38% in 2003

Google Releases Movie Showtime Search

Movie showtimes are now available on Google and can also be accessed via mobile phones and other wireless devices that use SMS. The service provides theatre locations and reviews, and allows users to search for movie titles, plot, or genre.

Amazon Partners with Fandango

Amazon.com, through its Internet Movie Database, partnered with Fandango to provide users with the choice of buying movie tickets 45 days in advance.

Google also partnered with MovieTickets.com to provide the same service.

Q404 Advertising Revenues Totaled $2.7B

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PwC) stated that Internet advertising in the U.S. totaled $2.7B in the fourth quarter of 2004, up 24% YoY and up 17% over third quarter of 2004 ($2.3B). Full Year 2004 revenues totaled $9.6B, up32% YoY, or about 3.8% of total advertising dollars.

A full report with the various advertising splits (search, rich media, display ads, etc.) will be released in the Spring

FireFox Downloaded 25 Million Times

According to an article by Information Week, FireFox has been downloaded over 25 million times, and continues to take market share from Internet Explorer. A preview release of FireFox 1.1 is scheduled for April 1, 2005.

Separately, it has been reported in the press that Ask Jeeves (ASKJ) is talking with Mozilla developers about building its own branded browser on top of FireFox.

Note that Bill Gates has announced that Microsoft plans to release an update beta version of the Internet Explorer browser (7.0) in the summer of 2005, ahead of the release of the Longhorn operating system. The new browser is meant to address the security issues that are reportedly plaguing the current version of IE. Some are thinking that if successful, IE will regain a significant part of its lost market share. Wonder if the new IE will have tabs, the most exiting feature of FireFox, in my opinion.