CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Sohu

Chinese Internet company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ965133 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sohu, Inc. (Chinese: 搜狐; pinyin: Sōuhú; lit. 'Search-fox') is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayer gaming (ChangYou.com) and other services.

History

Sohu was founded as Internet Technologies China (ITC) in 1996 by Charles Zhang after he completed his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received venture capital funding from colleagues he met there. The following year, Zhang changed the name of ITC to Sohoo in homage to Yahoo! after meeting its cofounder, Jerry Yang; the name was soon after changed to Sohu to differentiate it from the American company.

In 2000, Sohu (NASDAQ: SOHU) was officially listed on NASDAQ, through a variable interest entity (VIE). Later that same year, in September, announced Sohu the acquisition of ChinaRen, one of China's largest youth community websites. In October, Sohu was ranked by Forbes among the "300 Best Small Companies in the World."

Sohu's search engine Sogou entered talks in July 2013 to be sold to Qihoo for around $1.4 billion, although the deal did not go through.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sohu” as chinese Internet company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 2000, 2013—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1996-08. The account is most persuasive where Sohu, Chinese and Internet can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as chinese Internet company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q965133. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 2000 and 2013.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sohu”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sohu primary sources, Sohu archive and Sohu research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sohu”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Sohu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.