Qihoo 360

Qihoo 360 (; approximate pronunciation CHEE-hoo), full name 360 Security Technology Inc., is a Chinese internet security company that has developed the antivirus software programs 360 Safeguard and 360 Mobile Safe, the Web browser 360 Secure Browser, and the mobile application store 360 Mobile Assistant. It was founded by Zhou Hongyi and Qi Xiangdong in June 2005. The company's head office is in Chaoyang District, Beijing. In the summer of 2012, Qihoo 360 entered the smartphone market by launching the Battleship phone together with the large Chinese electronics company Haier. Qihoo 360 stated that Haier will provide the hardware while Qihoo 360 will focus on customising the software, albeit the main operating system will be Android. Qihoo 360 received over 220,000 pre-orders for the phone the first day. Later in 2012, Qihoo 360 launched the search engine so.com, thereby directly competing with Baidu, the most prominent search engine in China. Qihoo's share of unique visitors grew to 10.52% of the total search engine market in China. At the end of July 2013, Qihoo was in early talks to acquire Sohu.com’s Sogou.com search engine for around $1.4 billion. In early 2015, Qihoo rebranded its so.com search engine as haosou.com. "Hao" in Chinese means good; Haosou directly translated to English means "good search engine". In December 2013, the company increased its stake in the Brazilian tech company PSafe. On July 11, 2014, the company set up a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley. On December 18, 2015, Qihoo 360 agreed to be acquired by a group of investors in a deal valued at about$9.3 billion. On July 18, 2016, Qihoo 360 bought most of Opera Software for US$600 million. United States sanctions against China In May 2020, Qihoo 360 and other Chinese companies were placed on the Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List due to U.S. national security concerns. The U.S. accused Qihoo 360 and others of playing roles in the crackdown in Xinjiang by "enabling China’s high-technology surveillance" in Xinjiang.