NetEase

NetEase Games (a division of NetEase headquartered in Guangzhou, China) was founded in 2001 with the goal of becoming the top global publisher and developer. Over the years, our love of games translated to success. Developing and releasing mega-hit mobile products like Fantasy Westward Journey, partnering in 2008 to publish Blizzard’s games and working with Mojang to launch Minecraft: Pocket Edition in Asia really put NetEase on the map in the gaming arena.

Year after year since, the company has continued to release successful mobile products and today NetEase Games is ranked No. 3 on App Annie’s Annual List of the Top 52 Highest Earnings Publishers in the world for iOS and Google Play Stores in 2016 (up six spots from No. 9 in 2015).

The company was founded in June 1997 by Chinese entrepreneur Ding Lei, and grew rapidly due in part to its investment in search engine technology. In 2012 the company's official English name was changed from NetEase.com, Inc to NetEase, Inc.

Early in the company's history, top executives quit amid possible ad revenue misreporting and buy-out talks with i-Cable Communications and others were reported.

In 2008, the 163.com domain attracted at least 1.8 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey. In 2010 the site was the 28th most visited site in the world according to Alexa's internet rankings. NetEase's official website address is 163.com. This was attributed to the past when Chinese internet users had to dial "163" to connect to the internet, before the availability of broadband internet. NetEase is the largest provider of free e-mail services in China with more than 940 million users as of 2017. In addition to 163.com, the company also runs 188.com, 126.com and more.

The company also operates a news website at news.163.com along with an associated app.