Netease start to monetizing its search engine

My last post that is Yodao related is here:

http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2007/09/cnnic-2007-search-market-survey.html

On 3/6/2008, Netease started to monetizing its new search engine, Yodao. See the following link:

http://a.yodao.com/login.s

From now until 3/30/2008, it also has a promotion where if a small company can get 100 dollars in promotion money when they put in 1 dollar. See the following:

http://a.yodao.com/campaign/200801/index.html

Yadao hadn’t done much and I don’t think it is even close in popularity to the top four search engine yet. When Sohu started its Sogou search engine, it waited for a long time before it started to monetize its search engine.

I doubt this will add anything of any significance to Netease’s revenue. I hope I am wrong, but it is just too late to get into search engines in China now. Baidu is just too good in technology, execution, management, and a tremendous head start. I have the feeling that Netease is just pumping money into a hopeless mis-adventure.