Google Guns for Baidu With New Offers
By McKenzie, Hamish
New products and a deal with a community site could signal the start of a momentum shift. By Hamish McKenzie Google China has signed new partnerships and launched a raft of products as it kickstarts its bid to unseat rival Baidu as market leader.
The most recent and perhaps most significant deal sees the search giant align with Tianya, a popular community site that boasts 20 million users.
Google won’t confirm what stake it has in the company, but soon after that news was reported it launched an answers service and a social network on Tianya’s domain. The launches appear to be aimed squarely at similar services offered by Baidu.
Google China has also launched blog search and in recent months has signed search and advertising deals with China Mobile and Sina, a leading portal.
The moves come as Google has started to gain a foothold in China, leaving it well poised for a strong marketing push in the near future.
Industry observers say it could be the start of a momentum shift.
“Increasingly, I see the level of trust in Google has increased across the board among the common consumers, among advertisers,” said Xinhua Liu, director of Burson-Marsteller China’s technology practice. “And also they’ve become more visible.”
Liu says Google is likely lining up category leaders in China for acquisition and will probably look to invest in some small Web 2.0 companies. That supports a report carried on some Chinese websites that quoted Google China president Kaifu Lee as saying it was looking to “acquire one or two companies in China, and invest in four to five companies” over the next year.
“They certainly have to make some moves that they haven’t had to make in other markets,” said Fritz Demopoulos, chief executive officer of online travel service Qunar and a China internet veteran. Rather than acquire talent on an individual basis, Google will likely look to small internet companies with in built teams and technology for expansion, Demopoulos said.
Google has recently re-opened and restaffed its Shanghai office, which had been put on the backburner when it shifted its headquarters to Beijing at the start of 2006.
It has also become more aggressive on the sales side of the business, said T R Harrington, principal of Shanghai-based search engine marketing agency Darwin Marketing, a Google partner.
“For the first time in a long, long time I feel like Google is not losing ground right now,” Harrington said.
By press-time, Google China didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
As the search battle intensifies, Baidu has fired shots of its own. In a major move, it has just launched Baidu TV, a contextual video advertising service, opening up its media network of more than 150,000 partners to advertisers hoping to better target their online video spots.
Google blog search… one of a raft of product launches
Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Sep 2007
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