Google Inc. plans to announce an investment in Xunlei Networking Technology Co. Ltd., a Chinese peer-to-peer file sharing Web site, the China Daily reported on its Web site Thursday.
The deal will be announced Friday, the newspaper said, quoting a Xunlei executive. Google executives could not immediately be reached for comment.
Google is struggling to succeed in China, where the company has steadily lost ground to local rival Baidu.com Inc. Buying a stake in Xunlei, which gets 50 million visitors to its Web site every day, according to China Daily, could help Google regain some ground in China.
Also on Thursday, Google announced a deal with China’s largest mobile operator, China Mobile Communications Corp., that makes the U.S. company the search engine on China Mobile’s WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) portal site.
Chinese mobile operators tightly restrict the content that subscribers can access, and this deal could give Google a jump on demand for mobile search applications.
However, China Mobile does not offer 3G (third-generation) mobile services, which means subscribers can only access the WAP portal over its slower GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) network.