Zacks, a U.S. investment research firm, reported in Monday

PSafe is a Brazilian anti-virus service provider, part of Rio de Janeiro's Grupo Xango. The company's co-founder includes Marco Demelo (Marco De Mello), a former Microsoft employee.

According to the U.S. Science and Technology blog TechCrunch data, PSafe average number of users reached 20 million, the installation of the amount reached 30 million. The company's rivals include AVG, McAfee, Symantec and Avast. PSafe develops apps, content, and gaming stores in its products, very similar to Qihoo's business model.

Qihoo's goal is to become one of the largest companies in the Global Information Security Service industry, so it is now expanding in countries with relatively good growth prospects, such as Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa, but still less developed.

Qihoo did not disclose the number of PSafe shares held. However, after this overweight, Tiger is expected to become PSafe's largest investor. The company's second largest investor is Redpoint.

In the 2010, Qihoo tried to reach a partnership agreement with PSafe through small-scale investment and the provision of authorization. This allows PSafe to use Qihoo's anti-virus cloud scanning technology in the Latin American market. The partnership did not last long because Qihoo was skeptical about the prospect of PSafe.

Qihoo's current investment reflects the firm's determination to expand in international markets. Qihoo may not be satisfied with the competition in the Chinese internet market, as well as China's domestic internet environment.

Recently, the performance of Qihoo has grown very strong. The third quarter, Qihoo revenue for 187.7 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 124%, the chain growth of 24%. Strong revenue year-on-year growth was mainly due to the rapid development of online advertising and internet value-added services.

Qihoo's management appears to be satisfied with the commercialization of the search business and believes it will be a major growth driver for Qihoo in the future. But as competition intensifies, the prospect of Qihoo may fade if it fails to expand and to meet market demand through innovation.

At present, Zacks's rating of Qihoo's shares is equivalent to "buy".