Both companies are now racing to snap up partners. Baidu has recently signed a deal with Peking University Library, one of Asia's largest academic libraries, to cooperate on the launch of the library's online publishing wing.
"Baidu has already secured good relations with many local universities and libraries," a Chinese publisher told Reuters.
For its part, Google has signed cooperation deals with almost 20 local publishing houses to supply their content to the newly-launched Chinese version of its Book Search service.
The potential value of the market has already been proven, with smaller online Chinese book search firms such as Dushu profiting from both paid-for access to digital books and advertising revenue.
Western web firms have typically struggled to translate their services into the Chinese market and search has proved no exception, with the domestic Baidu currently leading the field.
Google has recently announced that it is planning to more than double the number of staff it has in China, aiming to have between 200 and 300 engineers in Beijing and Shanghai within the next year.
It is also planning to open a new research and development centre in the country, head of Google China Lee Kai-fu said last week, and launched a mobile phone partnership with China Mobile in December.
China is the world's second largest online market with 137 million users and is expected to overtake the current leader, the US, within two years.
