BIZCHINA / Biz Media Digest
IT: Google China news searches now focus on images
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-06-28 15:53
Google Inc. sought to close in on its China market rival Baidu.com by
allowing users of its Chinese site to find news by first searching for
images carried within articles.
The Web giants are vying for market share in the world's second-largest
Internet market.
Google's move was mainly aimed at catching up with Baidu -- which already
offers a similar search function -- as many Chinese Web surfers tend to
be drawn more to images rather than immediately seeking out text
articles, said Edward Yu, president at Beijing-based research firm
Analysys International.
Related readings:
Sina, Google team up to compete with Baidu
Google and MySpace expanding in China
Google to sell online ads on China Telecom
Baidu captures lead in online advertising
Google launches Chinese text input Baidu opens 1st overseas site
"The first priority for Google China is to try to build up as much
traffic as they can in order to close the gap with Baidu, then they can
monetize the traffic to get more advertising dollars," Yu said, adding
that Google would also need to launch services which are more tailored to
Chinese consumers' tastes.
The function was jointly developed by Google's recently established
engineering centre in Shanghai, and its centre in California in the
United States, spokeswoman Jin Cui said on Wednesday.
Google.cn's news page, alongside its traditional search method, now also
allows users to first search for an image, which then automatically calls
up the link to the corresponding story when the user rolls the mouse over
the picture.
Baidu dominated China's search engine market with a 57 percent share of
the 493 million yuan ($64.7 million) in first quarter market sales,
compared with Google's near-19 percent share, according to Analysys.
Google's engineering research centre in Shanghai, reporting rather than
simply show news search results, while Google is promoting a
Chinese-language map search service and online word processing programs.
Both are trying to build online library services.
(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)
Learn Chinese, Chinese Online Class
No comments:
Post a Comment