Google has partnered with the major record labels to launch a free online music service in China that is ad supported.
Initially the service will offer 350,000 songs from Warner Music, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and 14 independent labels. The number of songs will increase to 1.1 million in the coming months, said Gary Chen, chief executive of Google's partner www.Top100.cn.
It's rather unlikely that Google will ever dominate the Chinese search market; Baidu isn't even close to being beat. Just the same, a new report indicates the American search company is at least moving in the right direction, gaining an amount of ground last year that could be viewed as impressive.
The past year wasn't a bad one for the Chinese search market. A new report from Analysys International points to impressive growth in overall revenues, and the top two players both managed to increase their presence and popularity.
The Chinese New Year will begin on January 26th, and for some of the most prominent Internet companies in China, it's not shaping up to be a good one. Government officials are going after Google, Baidu, and Sina for distributing "vulgar" content.
Not long ago, China's top search engine was caught selling high search rankings to unlicensed doctors. The uproar that resulted hurt its reputation, caused earnings estimates to get lowered, and culminated in a personal apology from the CEO. Now, the Chinese arms of Google and Yahoo have been accused of doing something similar.
You may have heard that China's number one search engine Baidu has been the subject of some scandalous accusations lately. As a result, stock has plummeted, and so have advertising revenues for the company. A Little Background
It appears that Baidu, the Chinese search giant, has hit a bit of a stumbling block. Some major portals and social networks in its home market have stopped the company's spiders from indexing their sites.
As long as Baidu's Chinese and Google's American, it seems like that first company will have an advantage in a certain part of the world. There's a sign that Google China is trying to catch up, however, by offering something to compete with Baidu's much-loved MP3 search.
While that Microsoft-Yahoo business stole the show for a while, Baidu's found its way into the spotlight again. The Chinese search engine company had an admirable second quarter, beating analysts' estimates in some important respects.
International business continues to look good for Google, as their search engine attracted the biggest chunk of search share in April.
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