Baidu relaunch in Japan
Chinese search provider Baidu today relaunched their Japanese service.
The search engine, which has a market share of around 70% in China, hopes the expanded service will help them crack a market currently dominated by Yahoo and Google.
Baidu originally launched in Japan in March 2007, though failed to make a significant impact. This time around they are back with more Japanese language services, including a blog search facility.
This might not sound like a particularly a key feature to some Western users, but blogging is big news in Japan.
Baidu bank on blogs
More blogs are written in Japanese than in English. Considering that there are roughly fives times more English speaking Internet users than those speaking Japanese, this hints at the Japanese obsession with the blog.
Much blogging in Japan is done wirelessly, often with mobile devices on public transport. To exploit this, Baidu have entered negotiations with Japan’s wireless carriers to provide mobile search options to their subscribers.
Although Baidu appear to have seen off Google in their home market, they are realistic about gaining market share in Japan, where Yahoo and Google combined attract between 80-90% of users.
“We hope to replicate what happened in China,” says Robert Li, Baidu’s CEO, adding “We will be very patient.”
According to Reuters, 70% of Japanese Internet population use two or more search engines. In the short term, Baidu are targeting becoming users’ second search engine of choice, and will look to progress from there.
Baidu’s Chinese users are unlikely to be able to try the Japanese version any time soon however; as the search engine’s results are uncensored in Japan, the site is blocked in mainland China.
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