Bing to tango with Baidu to offer English search services
04 Jul 2011
A year and a half following Google pulling out its popular search engine out of China, on concerns over censorship in part, its rival Microsoft has clinched a deal with China's biggest search engine, Baidu.com, to offer web search services in English.
Baidu, which has been primarily been a Chinese-language search engine, came out with an announcement today, to the effect that Microsoft's search engine, Bing, was expected to appear on Baidu's web pages by the end of this year.
Baidu has a dominating presence in Chinese-language search services in China with about 83 per cent of the market. It has been since long trying to offer improved English-language search services as it logs around 10 million English searches on its daily, the company said. In Microsoft, it has found a powerful partner, according to analysts.
''More and more people here are searching for English terms,'' Kaiser Kuo, the company's spokesman, said today. ''But Baidu hasn't done a good job. So here's a way for us to do it.''
Though the two companies did not disclose terms of the agreement, according to analysts, the English-language search results would undoubtedly be censored, since Beijing maintains strict controls over internet companies.
Additionally companies operating in the country are required to sensor results the government deems dangerous or troublesome, including references to human rights issues and dissidents.
