Baidu’ Qunar with plans of US IPO

The travel site Qunar.com of Chinese search engine (Baidu) prepares for a US Initial Public Offering.

As per the latest media news report, Qunar is in discussion with Goldman Sachs [Investment banking company] and Deutsche Bank [the global banking and financial services company] for sale.

For a majority stake in Qunar, the Chinese search engine Baidu paid about $306 million in 2011 to capture the mobile travel app market.

Qunar generates revenue mostly through advertising. The CEO Zhuang Chenchao said the company expects to double sales, this year to about $163 million.

The company even prepares for a recruitment drive and will hire many software engineers, corroborates the CEO.

If Google killed the Reader, then is back with Google Alerts - RSS Feed option

If the search engine giant Google disappointed many after discontinuation of Google web feed reader service in July 2013, then it is back with feed delivery option [added] to Google Alerts.

Now, everyone can receive web alerts through RSS, once again. Google introduced RSS support in Alerts, in October 2008 which disappeared in July 2013.

People worried about possible alternatives of Google Reader can now breathe a sigh of relief.

The Internet users can log into Google Alerts and create new entries to receive RSS feeds - news, blog, videos etc.

Google Plus over Facebook: which is more popular?

Never did Facebook – the social networking service provider know that Google will pitch Google Plus against its social networking site and win the Internet customers over.

Founded in 2004 by Mark, Eduardo, Andrew, Dustin and Chris - Facebook as of September 2012 (about a year ago) had over 1 billion active users. Of them, many were fake users [suggest media reports]? Facebook serves the global audience, including ‘under aged kids’ that normally violate the site’s terms of service.

One may want to know, which is more popular: Facebook that launched in 2004 or Google Plus which hit the Internet market two years ago, in 2011.

Just two weeks after the launch, Google Plus reported about 10 million active users and its user base continue to grow than that of Facebook.

Be it blog hosting service, social information processing, networking sites or other products/services of Google – everything with the ‘Google’ label sells like a hotcake.