Baidu eyes huge overseas expansion

Baidu intends to push into foreign markets in a bid to become the number one search engine.

Senior vice president Shen Haoyu told a technology forum in Beijing that the firm is eyeing up foreign markets as a way of driving growth. He claims that “a lot of the company's growth in the next 10 years will come from overseas expansion," as part of its “global aspirations”.

Baidu has already created a Japanese language search engine and is now mulling over which markets to attempt to move into next. It's already setting up a multi-language platform in anticipation of further developments.

It has already been suggested that Baidu has been talking to Facebook and that is likely to put its main competitor both at home and abroad, Google, on the back foot.

Furthermore Microsoft is thought to be cosying up to Baidu, which could be the beginnings of a threat to Google's hegemony on a larger scale.

However, according to AFP, Google, which was forced to fall back on its own attempts to invade the Chinese market following a row over censorship and cyber attacks, tried to make it clear at the same forum that it would not be swayed by Baidu’s ambitions.

One of Google’s many vice presidents, John Liu, told the forum that “competition is just a reality” and that it is confident of its market prospects, despite dropping from 19.6 percent of the Chinese search market to 19.2 in this quarter.

Baidu also pointed towards its domestic market as an important factor in its expansions over the next few years, seeking to grab a greater slice of the mobile search market as the country’s mobile internet users grows.

With 900 million mobile phone subscribers in the country potentially available to tap into, Baidu is anticipating explosive growth in this market and wishes to capitalise on it like it has in the overall search market - with its 75.8 percent share.

Read more: http://www.techeye.net/internet/baidu-eyes-huge-overseas-expansion#ixzz1NUBtFsoB