Google has never been in a comfortable position in China. But it seems, the world’s largest Internet market might embrace the search engine giant once again and gift revenue growth too. Google’s senior officials have claimed that their revenue gains in China have been on the rise and it would boost their confidence. Google had earlier mulled a pull-out from Chinese mainland in 2010 March. However, it had never really left the Chinese market.
Google China vice president John Liu had a few words to say at the meeting over Google’s 2011 Partner Day held in Beijing earlier in September. He noted that Google China revenues are increasing steadily and the growth has been noticed quarter by quarter. He stated that of China’s 485 million netizens, Google has as of now reached 96% and it has more than 100,000 partners now for the count. In addition, daily ad displays topping 6 billion. Another update from Wang Ying, director of Google Greater China and Korea business cooperation, noted that of the top 100 advertisers in China, 97% have displayed their ads on Google.
For the second quarter of 2011, the search engine giant reported that they have recorded high revenues, which amount up to $9.03 billion. For the same specified period the last year, the amounting was 32% more this year. However, its financial performance in China during this period is still not specified.
Liu preferred not going into details about the group’s revenues in China since March 2010, when the search engine giant halted its google.cn search service in the Chinese mainland and the users were thus redirected to Google’s Kong site – google.hk. However there was a confirmation from his end that Google was focusing on users’ experience, rather than expanding its market share in China, which studies show was left far behind by its Chinese rival Baidu.
Talking about China’s search share, a quarterly report was released by Beijing-based market research company Enfodesk. The second quarter of 2011 saw Baidu claiming a huge share of the Chinese search market as 75.9%. Google has been able to secure only 18.9% of overall searches. This means that Google needs to work really hard on strengthening its position in China. Another stats for the same was released by an independent Chinese consulting firm IResearch. The huge gap was yet again reaffirmed by statistics for the second-quarter figures. IResearch stated that Baidu’s search market share in China at 76.8% and Google’s at 20.4% for the same period.
Google might have some troubles bettering its position in China as the Chinese-language search tycoon is powering ahead. Moreover, Baidu earlier this month unveiled that their search engine homepage was revamped. This change would incorporate web apps, bookmarks, and trends for registered users to pick and create unique frontpages of their own.
This would further fierce the battles between Baidu and Google. The Internet population is growing and China has a big share of the total Internet population. There might not be any other majorly competing with them, but Baidu still seems to be the kingpin in the Chinese search market.