Analysis Of The Case Between Tencent And Qihoo360of Unfair Competition

Both QQ messenger and360anti-virus software are most popular softwares inChina, they have one billion and0.36billion users respectively. In November2010, adispute between Tencent and Qihoo over competition practices had escalated.360accused Tencent of spying on its users and leaking users’ privacy. As a response,Tencent fabricated the next day that Qihoo had been investigated by the authorities ongrounds of commercial campaign via pornographic websites. Qihoo updated theprivacy guard to block ads in QQ, Tencent sued Qihoo for damaging the right ofreputation and sent a letter to all users that if one computer run360Guard, the QQmessenger wouldn’t work, Hundreds of millions of Chinese netizens were forced tochoose side, either to uninstall QQ or360’s privacy guard. This fight caught the wholeworld’s attention, and was called360vs. Tencent. The two companies fought witheach other on the computer desktops of billion people, seriously damaging the rightsof Internet users as consumers. Meanwhile this event was also discussed by legalexperts about whether the companies had broken the law. In China, legal norm ofcompetitive behavior on Internet are lagging far behind the developments of economicand technology. Tencent didn’t get tough sanctions even had abused the marketascendancy. The main reasons for this phenomenon are:(1)The definitions of newthing and new behavior are lacking judgment criteria that many delinquent behaviorscannot be identified;(2)The government, unable to meet its obligations, need tostrengthen regulatory efforts, multi-supervision result in inefficiencies;(3)The effortsto safeguard consumers’ rights is not strong enough, the process of justice is verytime-consuming, the damage of rights and interests of enterprises and consumerscannot get enough compensation in time. To improve the legal system of ChineseInternet regulation and create a fair Internet competitive environment, the legislativebranch should accelerate the progress of enacting Internet-related law, making theregulatory law more workable. Regulatory agencies should improve their technicalquality and law enforcement ability to protect consumer’s rights. Internet companiesshould also maintain the correct values to guide their behaviors, undertaking thesocial responsibility, so that the whole industry could build a good culture ofcompetition.