Google keeps on losing market share

Google keeps on losing market share to the domestic search engine Baidu, reports China Web2.0 review based on a new report by CNNIC. Baidu now get 74.5% of the Chinese internet users as primary users of their search engine, compared to 62% last year.
That can be explained by the fast growth of the internet by 30 percent over last year, when new Chinese users will most likely use a local heavy weight in stead of a foreign less known search engine. More troublesome is that Baidu is also winning in the high-end users. Google get 22.11 percent of the high-end users in the first-tier cities, but only 5 percent in the third tier cities.

Internet ventures rake in more business

A few new figures suggest that internet companies in China are in the lift in terms of both getting business and ad money in. China Web2.0 Review signals that e-market leader Taobao has consolidated its leading position in the C2C market with a 72% market share in the first quarter of 2007.
Quoting a report by iResearch:

According to the report, the C2C online shopping market in China has been gaining great momentum over the past six months. The report shows a lot of data to back up their claim. The transaction volume of Taobao for the past six months is RMB 15.7 billion, which has increased by nearly 200% comparing to the same period of 2006. Taobao has 39.9 million registered users by the end of June 2007, increasing over 80% comparing to the same period of last year.

That does not mean Taobao or its parent Alibaba.com is already making money. Who is making money is Baidu, China's largest search engine. CEO Robin Li announced the company had increased in the second quarter total revenue more than 100 percent to US$52.7 compared to the second quarter last year. Profits went up 142.7% to US$18.6 over the same period.

Google and Sina team up

The battle of the giants is getting into place now Google and Sina have announced a strategic partnership, say reports all over the internet. The question is now, who is going to be the biggest, Sina, Baidu or QQ, and does it matter. Interesting times.

CCTV says it caught Baidu cheating

China's central TV CCTV said it has now proof for rumors going around in the market for a long time: the largest domestic search engine Baidu.com sells its search results for money. Even more, it sells top positions to companies who cheat their customers, reports China Tech News.

Since it only unveils what many users already expected, the fall-out of this scandal might be limited.

Legal experts quoted in local media say that there is not a law to regulate the behavior of the search engine service providers, so the only thing they can do is to suggest consumers not to rely too much on the search results of those search ngines.

Tencent goes into search

The succesful Shenzhen-based IT-company Tencent is now moving into the search business, reports China Tech News. The company is said to have bought in April the domain name wenwen.com ("Ask a question") for 80,000 rmb.
Tencent started off as an IM-company with its popular QQ and has used its over 200 million user accounts to successfully take on weblog hosting, video hosting and now moves into search, where Baidu and Google are still the number one or two.

Update: China Web2.0 review has more details.

Search engine conference becomes Yahoo-event

The second China conference on search engine strategies, at the end of this month in Xiamen, promises to be even less of an event than the 2006 SES in Nanjing last year. Last year China's leading search engine Baidu was not present at the stage.
Yahoo-China has now become the major sponsor, while Microsoft and Google have disappeared as a sponsor and on the current agenda I could only find a Google engineer who would be speaking. Also local players are no longer sponsoring. Of course, Baidu is certainly not present on the stage.
Even Alibaba's Jack Ma is no longer giving a key note speech like he did last year, as far as I could see on the website. Probably Mr. Ma does not feel to happy with the only unsuccessful venture he is heading. While the talk of a possible IPO of Alibaba has become stronger, Yahoo China is excluded from this exercise and probably for good reasons. The conference might still be of interest as an expert-meeting, but no longer as a media event.

Baidu might go into video-sharing

Billsdue notes that China's largest search engine has become a shareholder of video-sharing site KU6.com. It is obvious that they might not only be on board to the money, but are looking at a more strategic cooperation on this tough market.
It would make sense that, after Tencent, also Baidu tries to make most out of the huge traffic they already generate.

And now: Baidu.tv

That's China has a nice follow up on my earlier story where I told how a European company "obtained" the name Baidu and used it for their marketing in Europe. That is of course not done, but Baidu has not taken any action and now, according to That's China, the company has also bought baidu.tv. And they are looking for a VC: hope that VC employs a few good lawyers.