China Market to Become More Competitve

Bloomberg News announces Google sold it's sharehold of Baidu.com stock. Baidu.com is China's leading search engine with Google and Yahoo coming in at distant seconds.

Google sold 749,625 Baidu shares originally purchased for $5 million in June 2004. The shares sold for an estimated worth of $60.1 million on June 22, 2006.

In light of the latest press coverage Jon Murchinson, a Google spokesperson, stated:

It has always been our goal to grow our own successful business in China and we are very focused on that.

This coming so soon after Sergey Brin's "confession" that working with the Chinese government may be a compromise of Google values. Of course his statement was made one day before China cracked down on Google.com and Brin retracted the statement saying Google fully intended to go forth with the China plan. Interesting shaping of events.

While reports differ which search engine comes in second to Baidu.com, Yahoo or Google, it is clear Baidu.com holds the brunt of searches in China. With the selling of it's stock which tallied a mere 2.6 stake in the company, Google has given up it's influence on that part of the market competition.

In the words of Edward Yu, CEO of Analysys told Bloomberg:

As long as Google had a stake in Baidu, competition couldn't get too serious. Competition is now getting serious."

Bloggers, SEOs, SEMs, anyone interested in the China case get comfortable, this looks like it's going to be a long ride.