Microsoft is having great 4th today. We all know that Google has left China which is great in principle but business at times cares little about such things. Enter Microsoft who has just signed deal with China’s Baidu.
The way this is going to work is that Microsoft will supply search results for English-language queries on the Chinese search engine Baidu. Baidu is the top search engine in China. Even though Google has taken a less active role in the country; they are still in second place. Google withdrew its China-specific Web site after raising concerns about censorship. Microsoft acquired the 3rd place spot when they brought Yahoo’s search assets. With this deal they move closer to a goal of taking over that 2nd place spot.
The way search partnerships work is that the supplier of the search term gets a portion of the resulting ad revenue. It’s nothing new in the states. Ask Jeeves uses Google results, and Yahoo uses Microsoft’s Bing search results. Baidu and Microsoft said the following respectfully:
“More and more people here are searching for English terms…but Baidu hasn’t done a good job. So here’s a way for us to do it,” a Baidu representative told the Times.
“We certainly think it is better for us to be present around the world rather than not,” Microsoft Brad Smith
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