Google gained market share in China in past six months

13 Jan 2010

Despite its threat to pull out of the Chinese market over an alleged cyber attack on its servers, internet giant Google has been closing the gap on the largest search engine in China, Baidu.com, in the last six months.

According to web analytics company StatCounter, at the end of 2009, Baidu held 56pc of the Chinese market compared to Google’s 43pc.

“Google has made impressive gains in China since July last, when it was at 30pc compared to Baidu’s 68pc,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

“Our analysis suggests that given Google’s recent strong performance, market share is certainly not the reason behind its threat to leave China at this time.”

At the end of 2009, Yahoo! and Bing’s combined share of the Chinese search market stood at just 1.18pc.

Despite significant gains in China in the last six months, Google’s market share there still lags its global penetration, where it has more than 90pc of the market.

The analysis is based on 24 million search-engine referring clicks from China, which were collected between July and December 2009.

By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com