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Jun. 6, 2007

Chinese search engine Baidu is apparently planning to take on Google in the European market, with the company expected to launch a European version of its search engine.

So far, Baidu has held off competition from Google to remain the biggest search player in China.

Baidu reportedly has about a 58 percent search share, compared with Google's considerably lower 17 percent share of the market.

Baidu recently entered Japan and was expected to expand further in the Asian market, but now there are reports that it plans to announce a European launch near the last week of June 2007.

But with Google so dominant in the search area, Baidu will find it very difficult to make inroads in Europe, as its success so far is based on its expertise in the Chinese language and the size of China's rather large Internet audience.

It displays results differently than Google, ranking search listings according to amounts paid, and mixing paid search results with generic listings.

A recent study also raised concerns over Baidu's attitude towards the serious issue of click fraud.

Overall, Baidu advertisers believe that as much as 34 percent of all clicks on Baidu's paid links are fraudulent.

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Source: eConsultancy