Taobao launches Web search engine

Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce firm, has launched a search engine which means it will be coming up against Baidu.
Alibaba has taken Taobao, China’s largest and most popular online e-commerce website with a consumer focus, and has launched its public beta test of the search site, called Etao, which is a shopping search engine.
Etao provides not only search options for e-commerce but also a comprehensive search engine powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The move is a direct challenge to reigning Chinese search leader Baidu, which dominates more than 60% of the Chinese search market by advertising revenue.
Alibaba Group is about 40% owned by Yahoo.
Reuters reports that Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Bing in China. The firm told the Wall Street Journal in September it is looking for a partner in China to help the company play a major role in China’s internet search market.