With a massive 62 per cent share of the Chinese search market, Baidu have proven a fierce challenge to Google, which has a firm grip of approximately 78 per cent of the world's searches. In fact, since Google moved into the Chinese specific search market late last year, the world's leading search engine has struggled to gain advantage on Baidu.After over six months of extensive research regarding the Japanese language search market, Baidu's chairman and CEO, Robin Li, was enthusiastic about the search engine's prospects in the country - particularly in the light of the company's proven experience in the non-English language search technology.
"We believe that our proven strength in non-English language search, the high internet penetration in Japan, as well as similarities between the Chinese and Japanese languages make this market an ideal next step for Baidu.''
Reported as the fourth most trafficked website in the world by Alexa.com, Baidu have managed to fend off heavy attacks from Google by branding their rival as the outsider and reminding their target market of a commitment to aid China's growth, investment and expansion. With their emergence into the Japanese market just round the corner, it's easy to imagine that they will encourage unity and confidence in Asian entrepreneurial expansion.
Google was met with criticism earlier this year when it censored its search technology at the request of the Chinese government, and many commentators claimed that the move supported the censorship of an individual's right to freedom of speech. But Google certainly have not been the only foreign company to have had difficulties in China: Microsoft and Wikipedia have also had to adjust their operations in China to comply with the Chinese Government's heavy censorship policy.
Baidu will meet Google head on in this new expansion, with the American company having already established a Japanese language version of its search technology. Japanese Google Video Search has also gained recent attention with Google seeking partners to contribute content in Japan.
Upon making the announcement, share prices climbed by almost 3 per cent. But analysts quickly questioned the success of the move with comments on the infancy of the Chinese search market and a concern over Baidu stretching its resources too thin.
Despite the profusion of sceptical commentary on another young company facing the might of Google in Japan, it's impossible to ignore Baidu's continued success in fending off the world's favourite search engine on home soil. It remains to be seen whether the market has been primed for Baidu's success in China, or if the government's heavy crack down on foreign expansion through censorship has assisted their resolve against the world's largest search engine.
