Microsoft, Baidu Bolster Alliance in China

SHANGHAI — A year and a half after Google pulled its popular search engine out of China, partly over concerns about censorship, its rival Microsoft has struck a deal with China’s biggest search engine, Baidu.com, to offer Web search services in English.

Baidu, previously primarily a Chinese-language search engine, made the announcement Monday afternoon, saying Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, was expected to appear on Baidu’s Web pages by the end of this year.

Baidu, which dominates Chinese-language search services here with about 83 percent of the market, has been trying for years to improve its English-language search services because English searches on its site are as much as 10 million a day, the company said. Now it has a powerful partner.

“More and more people here are searching for English terms,” Kaiser Kuo, the company’s spokesman, said Monday. “But Baidu hasn’t done a good job. So here’s a way for us to do it.”

Baidu and Microsoft did not disclose terms of the agreement. But the new English-language search results will undoubtedly be censored, since Beijing maintains strict controls over Internet companies and requires those operating in China to censor results the government deems dangerous or troublesome, including references to human rights issues and dissidents.

Increased demand from Chinese companies marketing on international websites such as the English-language Google.com helped Google post increased revenue in China in 2010, Daniel Alegre, president for Asia-Pacific at Google, said in December.

Google has lost market share to Baidu in China since the Mountain View, California-based company pulled its Google.cn search-engine out of the country last year, according to data from Analysys. Baidu increased its share to 75.8 percent from 75.5 percent in the first quarter, while Microsoft Bing’s market share is less than 1 percent, according to Analysys.

Baidu had an existing agreement with Bing for some mobile- phone users in China, Haoyu Shen, senior vice-president at Baidu, said in May. Baidu is working on efforts to expand overseas, and its developing products in 12 foreign languages, Shen said at the time.

Alibaba stopped offering Microsoft Bing on its eTao search service, Justine Chao, a spokeswoman at Alibaba, said in May.