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Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel, and Baidu, China's largest search engine, have partnered to launch a new website focused on science and technology.

"The launch of discovery.baidu.com represents an important step in building stronger brand awareness and consumer loyalty for Discovery in the key Chinese market," said Greg Ricca, President and CEO, Discovery Networks International.

Greg Ricca
Discovery Networks Int'l

"This deal with Baidu furthers Discovery's strategy of increasing reach and distribution in key markets around the world while further leveraging the global appeal and long shelf life of our content categories with an innovative new partnership."

Baidu will operate the website and Discovery will be the exclusive content provider. The content offerings will be ad-supported with Baidu and Discovery sharing revenue from third-party advertising sales.

The agreement expands Discovery's presence in China, where the company first began broadcasting in 1998 with several channels including the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Home & Health and Discovery Science.

Baidu is the fastest growing Chinese online platform and accounts for 73 percent of the search market. In 2008, 246 million users in China used search engines, with the total number of request for web page searches exceeding 150 billion. In 2009, the number of search engine users in China is on track to surpass 300 million.