Culture

Google eyeing China blog site?

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.

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Elinor Mills

Feb. 7, 2006 4:35 p.m. PT

The China Times is reporting that Google may be in discussions to acquire Chinese blog site Bokee.com, with more than 2 million registered users, according to a research alert from Bear Stearns released on Tuesday. The report says Google would pay $160 million for Bokee, $90 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. Yahoo also is reportedly interested and willing to pay $200 million. There was no immediate response from Google or Yahoo on the report.

Bear Stearns' take on this?

"We think China, even though it has close to 110 million Internet users, is still in a very nascent stage (8.5 percent penetration)," the research alert said. "We believe that current market shares across all the various e-commerce platforms can shift dramatically over the next few years as Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft and others put further emphasis on this region, which will likely be the largest e-commerce market in the world."