NetEase, a NASDAQ-listed company is announcing that all its users of these three email systems, i.e. 163 Mail, 126, and Yeah.net will have free unlimited storage starting in September 10 afternoon 2pm. This strategic move by NetEase was primarily designed to make its users happy and satisfy of the services rendered, and not being attracted by the promotion of another email provider, Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Mail currently also offered unlimited storage for its users in China that sign-up under the domain @yahoo.cn while the user whom still prefer domain @yahoo.com.cn will have the basic online storage restricted to 3.5G.

NetEase was the first company that launched Chinese version of email online storage to the China people there since 1998. Its popular 163 Mail or 126 Mail is restricted to 3G prior to this upgrade by the current users. Both email systems are Ajax interface and Kaspersky antivirus program have pre-installed into the products. Due to the brand name of NetEase, they currently have more than 190 million users that used their Webmail products. Maybe you are in doubt of how they going to manage these three different Webmail products under one umbrella, but they managed to get their users satisfied and happy with the features that they offered.

According to a trusted source in China, a new search engine that called Yodao will be officially launch on July 1st next month. There had been talk in the media of China that this search engine will replace the so.163.com. Indeed, in many ways, 163.com was not considered as a search engine that similarly to Baidu, that owned their proprietary search technology, but was rather a Google’s partner in China that happened to be using Google’s search technology in reaching the Chinese users. However, thing might change now, they launched their new search engine, Yodao could represent a new chapter for them.

On the landing page of Yodao, users can search through the web, image (pictures), blog and dictionary. As I enter the keyword “technology” on their search engine, two lines of explanation appeared. as shown in the above picture:

Meaning: 1. The development of the information technology is the greatest technological advance of the 20th century.

Grammar: 2. Large scale industry emerged only gradually as technology evolved.

I simply don’t understand why they build this “dictionary” services into their search engine. A biased view is that majority of Chinese people that living in China are lack of English proficiency than those that stayed in South-East Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. In the other way, some Chinese living in Malaysia or Singapore that I met, they don’t speak Mandarin.

In addition to this, Yodao has also built-in the text snapshot view whenever you move your mouse cursor to the links of the search results, as illustrated by this page. There is more information, i.e. some demos in this search engine on their “Help” page (in Mandarin).