Although Google is presently establishing a sizeable presence in the Chinese search engine market, domestic search engine Baidu has announced a doubling of its profits in the second-quarter of this year.Shares in Baidu stood at 4.09 yuan (.26 pounds) as of July 25th, compared with 1.69 yuan (.11 pounds) for the corresponding period last year.
At present, China has the world's second largest web user population behind the US and is on course to overtake America by 2009, the Chinese government has said.
This is one of the underlying reasons behind the success of Baidu and is also why the Chinese search engine has posted profits of 141.9 million yuan (9.9 million pounds) in the year period to June, the firm announced.
"We saw robust revenue growth and a healthy increase in online marketing customers," chairman and chief executive Robin Li said to Forbes.
Also speaking to Forbes was Gene Munster, a Piper Jaffray analyst, who explained: "The results suggest that Baidu is the lead horse and their lead is gaining. They have a pole position in the market for ultimately what is going to be tremendous growth in e-commerce in China over the next five years."
Beijing-based research firm Analysys International has declared that Biadu can currently lay claim to holding more than half (58 per cent) of search revenues in China, an increase of one per cent on the first-quarter of 2007.
