Microsoft has teamed up with China’s censored Baidu search engine to bring English search capability via Bing.Microsoft is picking up where Google left off after last year’s falling out with the Chinese government over forced censorship, with Microsoft now continuing its partnered services with Baidu.
The partnership will see English search results cropping up on the major Chinese search engine as generated by the Microsoft’s US-based search service, Bing.
Google suspended its Chinese search engine operations after coming up against censorship issues with the Chinese government which saw the service banned in Mainland China. Google currently links Google China users to its Hong Kong website to circumvent its search ban.
Microsoft currently offers Bing services to Baidu for mobile search services, now continuing with this latest service addition later in the year.
Baidu holds the majority of China’s internet users at 80 per cent of the nation’s half billion online population. Despite Google China holding around 20 percent market share, far ahead of Bing, Microsoft could pull greater profit out of the Chinese search-advertising industry and gain headway on its competitor in that market.
Globally, Bing is still behind in search popularity, trailing behind Google and Yahoo search.
This partnership could also see Baidu moving further into overseas markets according to analysts.
Bing will be subject to the same censorship regulations that filter searches to do with pornography or politically tense subjects that it already abides by within the Chinese market.
Rumours of the recent deal between Microsoft and Baidu first began cropping up in May across Chinese media, pointing at a new strategic deal that would see Baidu take over the paid ads of Bing China.
