Microsoft Calls China Most Important Search Market

From DailyTech: The search market is a very lucrative business for those involved. In America, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft's Bing are the clear leaders in the search business.

The Chinese search market is a very different landscape from what the major players in America are used to. In China, the top search engine by far is not a name that most Americans are familiar with. The top search destination for Chinese users is Baidu – Baidu holds 63.9% of the Chinese search market reports Reuters. That leaves Google in second place with 31.3% of the search market.

Reuters reports that the Chinese search market is very lucrative with a value of $293 million in Q3 2009. Microsoft is looking to increase the popularity of its Bing search engine in China and the software giant announced this week that China is its most important strategic market for search.

Microsoft issued a statement saying, "Microsoft is committed to the China market and the search market in China is the most important strategic market for Microsoft. We specially set the search technology center in China to get a deeper understanding of what Chinese users need, to be able to deliver the best product to them."

China is such an important market to search firms because it is home to the world's largest internet population with more than 350 million users. Bing has been available in China as a beta product for a while now, but has not made a significant impact in the market so far. Even Google is currently little threat to Baidu.

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