[photopress:BAIDU.jpg,full,alignright]This is not good news for Google. Baidu.com, which has beaten Google solidly in China and now has more than 60 percent of the Chinese search market, wants to move into Japan.
It has conducted six months of research into the development of Japanese language search technology.
In a statement posted to the Baidu website, Robin Li, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, said, ‘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.’
Plainly, there is much in what he says especially the bit about ‘proven strength in on-English language search.
There are, as yet, no details as to when this will happen but very early next year seems likely. For Google this is not happy news. In China, Baidu, according to the government, has 62.1 percent of China’s search market. Google lags badly with 23.5 percent. And this is the second largest search market in the world.
Add to it the 85 million Japanese who access the Internet and suddenly these become very frightening figures for Google.
Source: USA Today and wire services.