Sohu, China’s second-largest Internet portal, is selling 16 percent of its search-engine service Sogou to Alibaba Group, the parent of Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com, the country’s top e-commerce company. Another 16 percent is being sold to Yunfeng, a fund co-founded by Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma and invested in by Sohu chairman Charles Zhang, according to a statement released by Sohu on August 9. Sohu is holding the remaining 68 percent. Meanwhile, Wang Xiaochuan, Sohu’s chief technology officer, has been appointed CEO of Sogou. At present, Sogou is running a distant third behind Baidu and Google, the two biggest players in China’s search market. The latter has effectively pulled out of the mainland of China and relocated its servers to Hong Kong but it still gets substantial traffic from loyal users. People close to Alibaba said the Sogou deal represented a recognition by the e-commerce firm that it might need to invest more in search technology.