Baidu Bing, Baidu Bang: Bing And Baidu Announce Search Deal

China is notorious for censoring the internet within its boundaries to keep citizens from accessing things that might not meet the questionable moral code of the Chinese government. Google and China have a long running feud but things between Microsoft and China are seemingly smooth. Microsoft is making a big move to raise the awareness of its Bing search engine in the largest internet market with a new deal with the Chinese Baidu search engine. The deal sees no money change hands and Baidu will even keep the revenue generated by ads under the deal.

What Microsoft gets out of the deal is its English language search results integrated into the Chinese Baidu search listings. Baidu gets to expand to English language searches and grow its English language reach since the engine is only strong in China. Baidu is the leader in the Chinese search market by a huge margin with about 3/4 of the market with Google having 19.6% of the Chinese search leaving Microsoft with very little reach in China.

The deal also highlights key differences between Google and Microsoft in the search market within China. Google operated its own website in China, which is now hosted out of Hong Kong. Microsoft on the other hand has only promoted Bing inside China by partnering with local sites. Baidu also notes that the Bing deal will help it to expand into the international search market. That would mean Baidu is looking to expand and hoping Bing will help.

[via CNN]