Next week Google’s decision to terminate its contracts with seven large Chinese advertising resellers goes into effect. Analysts say the move will benefit China’s leading search engine Baidu.
Google said in late September it would terminate the contracts with the seven ad resellers in China, without giving a reason.
Cindy Qin, a spokeswoman for Google, confirmed the move and said, "We hope to find new resellers to partner with so we can provide even better service to our advertisers."
Credit Suisse estimates the seven AdWords distributors contributed RMB1.5 billion (US$225.8 million) in gross revenue last year or about 40% of Google China’s revenue.
"Baidu sales people could use this opportunity for customers hesitating between two search engines to use Baidu instead of Google," said Fiona Zhou, an analyst with JLM Pacific Epoch.
Reuters reports Baidu will announce its third-quarter results later Thursday.