Xunlei.com Stocks Acquired by Google

Google has invested $5 million in Shenzhen Xunlei Network Technology Ltd., a Chinese Website that helps users download videos from the Internet.

Xunlei means lightning search in Chinese. According to China Web 2.0, this investment announcement is expected to take place Today. Google China would invest $5 million and Ceyuan Venture would invest $15 million.

The company, which is based in Shenzhen, not far from Hong Kong, was formed in Silicon Valley in 2002 by two Duke University graduates, Zou Shenglong and Cheng Hao. They moved the company to China the following year.



Some of Xunlei's currently advertising customers are Dell, KFC, Lenovo, Motorola and Nokia.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed by Google, although the China Daily earlier reported that Xunlei planned to announce the details soon.

Google is the world's most dominant search engine, but not in China where Baidu.com trails, according to analysts.

Iresearch Reserch, which keeps track of the search engine market here, shows that Baidu had a commanding 63 percent share in October, the most recent month for which figures are available. Google was second with 19 percent; Yahoo had 7.6 percent of the market.

Google unloaded its stake in Baidu for a cool 10x return - $60 million. So, if history tells us anything about the future, Xunlei could be a nice 10 bagger for the VCs and for the big G.

This move come after Google closed its $1.65 billion acquisition of top online video-sharing site YouTube.