Baidu

Baidu Inc made a forecast for its revenues for the third quarter, outpacing well ahead Wall Street's expectations as large advertisers increased spending.

A Chinese top search engine has seen a significant growth of its profits as it has focused on online video and e-commerce over the past time.

Seeing large flows of money from big advertising customers in the largest Internet market in the world Baidu posted $252.6 million net profit in the second quarter of 2011.

Baidu signed an agreement with One-Stop China, a joint venture owned by Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music to distribute songs through its mp3 search service. It will put an end to years of criticism for sponsoring illegal mp3 downloads from its servers.

Baidu entered into a deal with One-Stop China for its music catalogues and new releases that can be streamed or downloaded from Baidu's servers.

Baidu, Chinese search engine giant, has started offering its new beta web browser that features a collection of 30,000" apps" that can quickly connect users to online games, videos and other tools.

Monday a beta version of Baidu Browser was launched. The browser is marketed as "simple and reliable", sporting secure navigation protected against malware infiltration. The browser is equipped with a "treasure house" feature, which functions like an app store.

A Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba Group is developing a mobile operating system which will be launched in the third quarter, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The mobile operating system, to be developed by Alibaba's cloud computing unit, will also provide mobile applications, the paper said quoting an unnamed source close to the matter.

Baidu, Chinese top search engine, is also developing its own mobile operating system based on Google’s Android platform, according to recent reports in the local media sources
 

A Chinese search engine giant Baidu entered into an agreement with Microsoft to offer English-language search results to Baidu’s users.

As a part of the partnership users will be able to enter English-language queries into Baidu’s search box to automatically activate Bing and Bing’s search results will be delivered to Baidu's Web pages, Baidu said in an emailed statement on Monday.

Analysts said the tie-up would help Bing to gain greater access to China's more than 450 million Internet users and further dent Google's business in the country.

A lawsuit has been filed with the US District Court in Manhattan by 8 New York residents. The plaintiffs are suing Baidu Inc and the People's Republic of China accusing the search engine of conspiring with the country's government to censor pro-democracy speech.

In their filing plaintiffs claim that the Chinese company violates the U.S. Constitution and name not only Baidu by also the Chinese government as defendants. According to the plaintiffs’ lawyer it is the first case of its type.

According to the reports by Chinese official news agency Xinhua, Culture Ministry of China will punish Baidu for allowing illegal music downloads.

An official said that the government will punish 14 websites including Baidu, a top search engine in China, for continued illegal music downloads in spite of many warnings not to do it.

Baidu could not be immediately reached for comment.
 

While AOL, Apple and Yahoo suffered losses of more than 1.00% in the stocks markets, Baidu’s stock jumped by a significant percentage on news that it is partnering with Facebook.

Earlier it was reported that Chinese search engine Baidu entered a partnership with Facebook to create China-specific social network which greatly impacted the trend in the exchanges.

Experts in the industry believe that the partnership if successful would bring a significant new stream of revenue for whatever parties share in the profits.

Baidu, the largest search engine in China, may soon face an anti-trust investigation over allegations that it blocked and degraded search query results for a Chinese online encyclopedia website. The complaint was filed by a company that owns the Wikipedia-like site Hudong.com with China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC). The complaint requests SAIC to begin an anti-monopoly investigation against Baidu and to fine the search giant 790 million yuan (US$120 million).

The largest mobile operator in the world China Mobile Ltd has launched a search engine for Chinese users in association with the state-owned Xinhua News Agency, according to the statement made by the both companies this week.

The companies say that the search engine www.panguso.com will be operated by a joint venture established by China Mobile and Xinhua. It will also be available for mobile users in the country.

Chinese Internet search giant Baidu Inc posted higher than expected profits for the fourth quarter beating all estimates. Shares of Baidu rose 7.7 percent in after-hours trade following the upbeat earnings report on Monday.

Last year Baidu got more market share after rival Google Inc curtailed its operations following a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship.

Google’s star is further declining in China after its almost-year ago conflict with the government over censorship and hacking. As Chinese advertisers have continued fleeing from its client base Google not only lost its search market share but slid to the third place in online advertising.

Owen Fletcher reports: "In a breakdown of Chinese online advertising market share, Beijing research firm Analysys International says Alibaba has overtaken Google for second place behind Baidu thanks in large part to its online shopping unit Taobao."

Taobao, a subsidiary of Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba Group launched its trial project to test a new search engine to compete with Baidu. The company launched the beta test of Etao past Saturday.

"Etao is a shopping search engine launched by Taobao and its in beta testing at the moment," a Taobao spokeswoman said in a statement on Tuesday.

Etao, www.etao.com, provides not only vertical search options for e-commerce, but also a comprehensive search engine powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Largest online retailer in China Taobao.com is conducting experiments with a new shopping search engine called etao, a company spokesman reported. No other details were given by the Alibaba Group subsidiary about the new search engine. Meantime, analysts expect the move to bolster the company's position as the top online retail and auction site in China.

As Baidu announced Thursday, it intends to focus its future mobile Internet investments on its core search business, targeting to dominate the next big Internet space.

According to Baidu representative, China’s leading search engine sees its broader future investment priorities to include mobile Internet and ecommerce initiatives in the B2C space.