Google Takes Stake in Baidu.com Chinese Search Engine

[MrMackin]

"SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Expanding its reach overseas, Google Inc. has taken a minority stake in a leading Chinese-language Internet search company, Baidu.com Inc., the Chinese company said Tuesday."

Article (http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBVQQQVHVD.html)

[dannysullivan]

Merc also had a good article (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/8867532.htm) earlier this month talking about reasons why Google needed to invest. Official release is here (http://www.baidu.com/about/en/N_0615.html).

[wiseMouse]

of course Google wants a stake in this rapidly (!) growing market. Just think were Chinese pages were in Alexa's global top 500 list one year ago and compar this with today....

[doppelganger]

If I had the money to spend, I'd invest in them too...

In fact, if I was going to build a search engine, China is where I would do it. The search market in China is still in the early stages. I read an article recently that talked about how China is just now going through their own dot-com boom... and maybe soon a dot-com bust. There are a lot of tech IPOs happening, and their stock values are being grossly over-inflated, yada yada yada.

It's interesting to watch this happen.

[AussieWebmaster]

I like Alexa being quoted as Baidu being number one. Try Sina and Sohu both of which rank higher than Baidu in the Global Top 10.
The fact that there are 3/4 (if net ease's 168 is counted) Chinese search/portals listed in that list supports the importance of watching the Chinese market.
Now if they could only get better access to credit cards and online payment methods things would be very different.