Google, Baidu Swap Market Share In China

The second quarter of this year didn’t go so well for Google in China.  According to a new report, the American search giant’s market share shrunk a bit, while that of its Chinese equivalent, Baidu, managed to get larger.

iResearch found that over three-fourths of all searches in China (specifically, 75.7 percent) were performed using Baidu in the second quarter of 2009.  This represents a gain of 1.6 percent compared to the first quarter.

Meanwhile, Google lost a similar lump of market share during that period – 1.1 percent – which landed it at a standing of 19.8 percent for the second quarter.

And finally, Owen Fletcher reported, "Microsoft’s Bing search engine also attracted a fraction of Chinese users after it went online in early June, but Microsoft will have to continue improving the service to retain users . . . .  Bing drew 0.3 percent of the searches in China in the second quarter."

It doesn’t look like any American corporation is particularly close to taking over the Chinese search market, then.  Although they’re sure to keep trying, since the market keeps growing in size and value.