China's Tencent has launched an independent domain name search website that adopts Google's technology and may serve as a channel agent for Google to promote its services.

Tencent's new search website, which has not been given a Chinese name, is called "QQ Search" for the time being. It mainly provides web, image, music, file and news search. It can also be used to search for content on QQ.com.

Registration data shows that the domain name was registered on February 9, 1998. Because Tencent was not set up at that time, it is believed that the domain name might have been purchased by Tencent at a later date.

Tencent inked a partnership with Google in January 2005 whereby both sides agreed that Tencent would adopt Google's search engine and paid advertisement technology.