Tencent loses three executives after restructuring

Three of Tencent Technology Co's senior executives have left their positions simultaneously after the company's search operation suffered losses of 2 billion yuan ($321 million) and was merged into other divisions, according to the China Business News on Tuesday.

Li Haixiang, senior executive vice president of Tencent, has resigned, but for personal reasons, the company confirmed to the Global Times Tuesday, refusing to reveal the current financial conditions of Tencent's search engine soso.com.

Li's departure occurred after the resignation of two other senior executives - soso.com's general manager Sun Liang and vice president Wu Jun - who were also responsible for the search business.

The search operation was divided into two parts during the company's restructuring in May. Its technology and product development sections were integrated into the technology and engineering group (TEG), while the traffic expansion and income sections were rolled into the mobile Internet group.

Tencent has seen promising prospects in mobile Internet and is attempting to apply its search service to mobile devices, the company said Tuesday.

However, the May structure adjustment aroused speculations from media that Tencent has begun to give up the domestic PC search engine sector.

Dong Xu, an industry analyst from Analysys International, echoed that soso.com may gradually fade out from the sector, where baidu.com has a substantial majority of market share.

Data released in October by Analysys indicated that baidu.com held a 78.6 percent market share in the third quarter of 2012, followed by google.cn's 15.4 percent, sogou.com's 3.2 percent and soso.com's 1.5 percent.

"Soso.com should turn to mobile, where there is no clear leader and Tencent has an edge since it entered domestic mobile Internet early and has developed some of the most-used mobile applications, such as its mobile instant messaging software QQ, into which soso.com could be integrated," Dong told the Global Times Tuesday.

Tencent also runs Wechat, a popular instant messenging software with voice capabilities.